Melody —
I understand the reasoned advice. However, in an era when “truth isn’t truth”, there is greater wisdom in electing to STFU. Forgive me being blunt.
The lessons of Galileo’s experience are well documented. Having both his life and spiritual salvation threatened with death and and eternal damnation for speaking truth to power. It took four hundred years for the Catholic Church to publicly concede he was right. Without issuing so much as an apology to him. A patently unconscionable response. “Sorry” and “we were wrong” is rarely in their vocabulary. Or rings hollow. No matter the depth of personal suffering they visited upon innocent human beings. Children or adults. Dead or alive.
A similar point of reference occurred this week when we laid an American hero to rest who some dishonored with the basest of lies regarding his military service to this country. Going so far as to refuse to fly flags at half-mast in honor of his sacrifices while his body lay in state under the Capital’s dome . It is difficult to imagine few things more fundamentally un-American.
Nor that an apology will ever be forthcoming by anyone who either willfully participated in or tacitly supported this farcical response to the death of a heroic man whose entire adult life was based on public service to his country. His deep and sincere patriotism laying waste to their unconscionable attempts to discredit his storied career with the crudest of falsehoods, as well as reprehensible comments that his opinion mattered not since death was near. They are traitors to our most cherished of American principles.
It speaks volumes when there are still people who insist the earth is flat. Or that children intentionally being separated from their parents at the border is morally justified. Let alone that the massacre at Sandy Hook never occured.
That the likes of Alex Jones and his Infowars army of followers are defiantly unrepentant for their offensive and immoral repudiation of the most basic facts regarding the death of those children defies all comprehension. Further compounded by the fact that one of the families of those children who publically took Jones to task for his outrageous lies had their lives threatened — forcing them to go into hiding. An exponentially unfathomable, immoral assault on decency. Enlisting a cynical hypocrisy and amoral twisting of facts that stretches the bounds of credulity. As most on the Right stood silent.
Where is the moral imperative that these same Americans touted for decades in respect to all things foreign and domestic? Recounting their cries of the threat of Russian dominance in the global sphere, or the sexual misconduct and deceit of a Democratic President, as well as all things in between? That America had lost its moral compass?
With the exception of a few — Nicole Wallace, Rick Wilson, and Steve Schmidt come to mind, the present cowardice of the Right is ubiquitous. They have surrendered the moral high ground, yet still dare to embrace the tenets of Christianity as their own. While attacking the most fundamentally accepted of facts. As though they alone are the arbiters of the province of truth. Lost on the irony of the inherent contradictions that are omnipresent in all they say and do. All while standing deaf, dumb, and blind to their own self-betrayal.
“See no evil, hear no evil…” never got anyone through the pearly gates.
We often reference that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”; a quote never stated or published, and misattributed to Sir Edmund Burke. The actual statement was written by renowned British philosopher and political theorist John Stuart Mill, and thus worded:
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
The silence is deafening.
It bears saying that a significant body of Americans have lost their souls. Strong words? Absolutely. Let’s not mince words. High time we call out evil when it rears its ugly head. It rises as we speak. For there is no other rational explanation for such inane and inhumane behavior. We stand on the threshold of America’s own Night of Broken Glass. Pay heed, doubters. For we who do nothing will have blood on our own hands.
I for one refuse to give their arguments any validity by engaging in a verbal dialogue to convince them, metaphorically speaking, that black is not white. Particularly when a three year old can point out that most basic, essential, and irrefutable fact. Utilizing the greatest of human gifts: logic and reason.
Why waste your breath giving even a scintilla of credence to their fallacious arguments? It’s proven to be nothing but a fool’s errand in this era. Allowing them to resort to the much overused and pathetically invalid rhetorical device of argument ad hominem, layering insult upon insult with patent lies and half-truths. Taking a celebratory lap of their pyrrhic victory as you finally garner enough courage to walk away from the obvious insanity.
Don’t confuse them with the facts if their minds are made up. Instead, pick up your favorite writing tool; or sit down at the keyboard. Write. Quit buying goods and supporting businesses that countenance this kind of behavior. And support those who “just do it”, going out of their way to renounce it. Protest. Do something. Do anything.
Just don’t waste another minute of your life engaging them in a verbal word salad contest chalk full of nonsense as to whether or not the Sun rising in the West and setting in the East is up for debate. Its not.
America’s greatest author, Mark Twain, summed it up with one of the most poignant and pithy of his observations regarding human behavior: “Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to distinguish the difference.”
Twain did not suffer fools gladly. Quick to recognize in his youth that Aeschylus’ famous quote stating “truth is the first casualty of a war” was axiomatic, Twain adopted the maxim that the pen was mightier than the sword. He engaged the human cabal of denial regarding their assault on facts and reality with a scathing rebuke. Through the art of storytelling.
Slaying ignorance with knowledge. Visiting brutal execution upon patently abhorrent lies. Weaponizing truth with biting humor and irony. Weaving layered, colorful tapestries of the most human of stories, delicately placing unique threads of wisdom throughout the fabric of the tale.
Twain let his writing do the talking. He refused to respond to his many critics lest he give them the satisfaction of thinking they had any value. They didn’t warrant even a passing mention. Time has borne that out. If and when he did “speak” to them, it was always through his works or public interviews. Twain’s wit ruled the day, dismissing his critics with savage humor. Praising the artistic bravery of those who had the courage to create something.
Twain speaks from the grave to this day. His body of writings still at work in schools everywhere across the world. Opening the minds of children with his wit and remarkable insight into the folly of humanity. All told primarily through the eyes of two young boys. Wiping clean the omnipresent human stain wrought by adults in a resounding silence of the written word…
