Why do p'lice guys beat on peace guys? ---Arlo, 1968, pause for Mr Claus in Normal entries

I’m an old school liberal. I didn’t get the memo that “we” no longer care about pacifism, that “we” would rather argue the empiricism of global warming than just stop polluting our home because it’s unsound policy, that “our” stand on civil liberties has narrowed down to color and sexual proclivity, that “we” now believe kindness IS weakness and tolerance is a betrayal of our ideals — no, I didn’t get any of those memos, but I got the meme’s all thirty-seven bazillion of them.

Pacifism, parity, and pollution aren’t a political stance for me, they are core beliefs and I sort of, naively I see, that these were shared beliefs among most humans. I haven’t stopped believing that, but I’d be hard pressed to show a present day recognizable example. Hmmm, sorry, clumsy sentence; I can’t think of a name to call out that everyone would recognize and agree on that’s a positive and forward-thinking voice. I can think of few that nobody would recognize and a few that nobody would argue with, like, say, the Dali llama.

Would it piss you off if I said the Dali llama hasn’t done shit for Houston? That there’s never been an African-Tibetan Dali llama? Or a female Dali llama? What about if I said he shouldn’t be allowed on American soil as a foreigner with global influence and no allegiance to the US of A? If any of that pisses you off than words obviously have power. I’m not sure if any of that is true (well, I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been a female or a black Dali llama) but you were pissed off just the same or found it funny, I was shooting for somewhere in-between.

Words have power.

We’ve been damn reckless with words of late. I was reading something a day or two ago, and the inevitable non-sequitur came up in the comments “… it’s like telling Houston All Cities Matter” I was going to reply and then it was all taken down. I don’t really know the answer to do all cities matter, I don’t care about cities I care about the people in them. Honestly, if you saw a person in trouble, any kind of trouble from a car accident to being persecuted, to … I don’t know, bloodied and asking for help, would you stop to do the math on the hierarchy of how much they matter (assuming your instinct is to help, if it’s not, I don’t care if you’re liberal or conservative, you’re wrong)? Houston is in trouble. So is most of Nepal (Mommy nature doesn’t discriminate over who’s day she’s going to fuck up), Montreal is giving pit-bull owners something like thirty days to get their fucking dogs out of fucking Montreal. Does that mean Atlanta doesn’t matter or Detroit or West Springfield? The rational mind would say “No, but they aren’t in eminent crisis.”

There is nothing inherently irrational about American liberals or American conservatives, and yet here we are showing our ass. It’s as exhausting yelling LIAR every time Trump lies as it must be to be Trump. The “Swamp” of Washington DC has been pretty effective at blocking the deeds of shitty presidents and good presidents alike. If the cat rips up your furniture you don’t have to kill it, just declaw it, there are some who declaw their cats because they might rip up the furniture. Personally, I think that’s kind of cruel, but, you know, they got the cat on purpose on we got trump on purpose. We certainly had the option of not bringing the cat home. I disagree with just about everything that comes out of the man’s mouth, but bitching about on social media seems … pointless. I think of his supporters as the audience of a Jerry Springer show in that I don’t feel compelled to argue with them, again, pointless …

I kind of hate bringing up ghosts over and over, but G and I on OD called it counting coup; making a sane and rational argument and getting insulted for it. The first one to lose their shit lost, like getting whopped with a coup stick in the middle of a gunfight. It was never meant to go national, and the originators of counting coup, well, it didn’t end up going well for them. They got shot or herded off to fallow land. I find myself wanting to swing my figurative coup stick at liberals as much as conservatives these days. More so, even, as “we” are supposed to be more tolerant.