I wonder if anyone else has noticed how many fat, angry Americans are featured in the public eye and political arena these days.
Their puffed-up obesity of hot air, fury and over-abundance of worldly goods reflects a steady diet of greasy, smelly, cheesy Limbaugher, with a Glen-Beckian chaser of tear-duct sentimentality. “I’ve got mine,” they bray, “and the hell with everybody else.”
I would modestly propose that an ego problem lurks behind much of this defiance and anger. There’s that climate-heating phenomenon melting the planet before our eyes, for example.
Ridiculed in the manner of Noah’s neighbors laughing at his ark, the ego-threatened unknowitalls have the gall to argue with the most informed, intelligent scientists in the world on a subject about which they have no knowledge, study or training. They know better. It’s all a “hoax.” But where, we wonder, is the joke?
A basic knowledge of chemistry would tell a halfway educated person that carbon dioxide traps heat in the air; and plain observation -- if we dare look -- would affirm the fact that human beings are sending such noxious, destructive gasses up there.
Blissful ignorance is the answer: Simply deny it.
To bring “intellectuals” down to a common level of ignorance is so much easier than learning something themselves--or perhaps having to sacrifice their gas-guzzler privileges in the interests of human survival.
There’s one handy label that covers a great deal of willful ignorance: socialism. Spout out the term “socialism,” and you won’t have to take any responsibility for your neighbor. Blame the government for corruption left ungoverned for the past eight years, and you won’t have to think about the reality behind insurance scams, pharmaceutical rip-offs or anything that doesn’t affect you personally.
After all, the poor are poor because they deserve to be and God is on the side of “successful” people like you who are not starving, left without homes, and denied health care.
The ignorance of any biological knowledge is a necessity for bolstering up the self-righteous ego. The obvious and proven fact that no person has any choice whatsoever in his sexual orientation is denied on the flimsy grounds that scripture-writers with similar prejudices viewed homosexuality as an “abomination." The Bible uses the same term for eating tomatoes!
The old boys might be excused for their lack of biological fact; however, all progress in the past 2,000-plus years should have taught us the difference between proven truth and prejudicial spite of our “different” neighbors.
Suppose the rules were suddenly changed: If homosexuality were declared the only “holy” answer, could any of us go into reverse on our biological nature? We have as much choice about that as we have about the color of our skin.
And that’s another ego-problem. If your white skin is the only thing you have going for you, does your ego demand that you hate and demean all others? Do you feel compelled to undermine every progressive measure instituted by Obama on those grounds?
Watering down truth with tears and flap-doodle, perverting all positive progress in economic and humane return to democracy, such kindergarten flunk-outs have missed the lesson on sharing, along with the discovery we are all supposed to make by the time we hit age 5: Other people have rights, too, and there’s no excuse for blaming them because they aren’t as protected by justice as the fat-egoed, bonus-deserving CEO who makes 450 times as much salary as his employees.