I can’t read “Lord of the Rings” these days without thinking about Stephen Colbert and his obsessive passion for these books. They are great books and eventually became rather amazing movies, but still and all … he knows things about these books I’m sure J.R.R. Tolkien forgot.
Nonetheless, in this time of stress and strife, I’m rereading the series for the umpteenth time. I’ve gotten all the way to the third and final volume of “The Lord of the Rings.”
The book is entirely about good and evil. The great evil that is Sauron. The somewhat lesser evil of his cohorts. The striving evil of Saruman, and the fear of everyone in the battle that they can find the right way and stay woven in the fabric of good.
When evil is everywhere, goodness can get a little complicated.
I bumped into this quote last night. I was tucked in for the night and I hoped I would remember it in the morning. I didn’t exactly recall it, but luckily for me “Lord of the Rings” is such a well-quoted book, I found it quickly on ye olde Internet.
Eomer said, ‘How is a man to judge what to do in such times?’ As he has ever judged,’ said Aragorn. ‘Good and evil have not changed since yesteryear, nor are they one thing among Elves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.
In the great fabric of life of which we are merely threads, good and evil are also a part of us. We are born with a genetic understanding of both. It is in our DNA. When we see evil and allow ourselves to become part of it — when we live in evil times, excuse and forgive evil — we become part of it.
A bad man and his bad adherents don’t have “a good side.” Lying about it changes nothing except maybe us.
When you read this book, you will sooner or later end up talking like this. You can’t help it. If you are really into it, you might just do it in Elvish or worse, Orcish.
There is so much going on in the world. All around the world, not just in the U.S.A. There has been a terrifying resurgence of the kind of retrograde, negative, and hatefulness I thought we fixed with that huge second world war that was fought just before I was born.
We forget. Or maybe, more accurately, we never fully understood what happened. We know what “we” did. We went and we fought the evil powers that had arisen “elsewhere.” Even today, we obviously don’t understand how it began. How it came to be so powerful that it took an entire world at war to make it end.
So here we are, 75 years later, and it’s happening again.
We don’t understand what happened then and apparently, we don’t see what’s happening now. Sometimes I blame the failure of our schools to properly teach history — real history. The truth about how a country goes from a democracy that has always been a home to every form of the arts and instead becomes an engine of terror and destruction.
It’s not alone, either. It may be the “biggest” of the countries that became the opposite of what they had always held dear, but they were by no means alone. There have been horror stories on every continent and no nation has been exempt.
Here we are again. Lying to the public with a public willingly believing the lies because the lies notch naturally into their personal hatreds and prejudices.
Do we have to completely destroy ourselves before we are inspired to look at our cultures, our societies, our world and say “This is not the way? Let’s be better.” Or, as Jim Jeffries likes to say, “We can all do better.”
We can all do a lot better. We need to do a lot better. We need to inspire each other with truth, honesty, caring, integrity, decency, and honor. Because if we can’t find those things and make them part of our souls and teach them to our children, there’s nothing worth saving.
Be inspired. Find the best parts of yourself. Spread the goodness to the world around you. Be better!
Folk songs notwithstanding, freedom is not “just another word for nothing left to lose.” Freedom is exactly the opposite of that. Freedom — having freedom — leaves you a lot to lose.
Like … say … your right to live a life you want to live. A life that is open to any choice you can make. Without freedom, life is a prison, even if you aren’t behind any bars.
When you are not free, they are always watching you, tracking you, closing off the doors to opportunity. They write laws which can get you executed, locked up, deported. They can take away what little you have and leave you with nothing, not even your life.
Lack of freedom means lack of choice. You can’t go where you want, do what you want. Achieve what you would.
Freedom means wings to fly while its opposite is chained and barred.
WE LIVE IN A NATION OF LIARS – OR ARE THEY MERELY STUPID?
We live in a have a country full of shallow, if not outrightly stupid people.
They watch “the news” and believe it’s all lies because an orange-skinned bloke says so. As a woman whose husband was a television news reporter for more than 40 years, I’d like to point out that not ONCE in his entire career did my husband haul his tired ass out of bed at all hours of the day and night so he could get up to fabricate lies for the public.
He made mistakes now and then — but not very often — and sometimes made the wrong choice about what story to cover, but never at any point in his long career did he intentionally lie to the public. Moreover, none of his colleagues lied to the public either.
Note that I do not include Fox in this discussion. Whatever it is they are doing at Fox, the news is not it.
The news has always been as truthful as the people who do the job can make it. Are there errors? Of course. Reporters are human beings and we are imperfect, but none of the errors was intentional. It wasn’t lying. Errors are not lies.
What Trump does? THAT is lying.
Garry was never told to tell lies. He was occasionally asked to omit something, but he didn’t do it even when asked. Garry tells the truth and so did his colleagues.
And the other reporters, photographers, directors, and producers? Theytold the truth, too.
Fact.
Reporters are not liars. They work their asses off trying to spread the truth to the dunderheads who too foolish to listen.
Fact.
The news is as true as the people who research and write it can possibly make it. Do they make mistakes? Yes, but they correct themselves and apologize. They don’t erase the truth about a president. Only another pathological liar, like our so-called president, could do that.
Fact.
The news IS the truth. If you are don’t believe reality, you are going to live with something worse, if you aren’t already. We are on a razor-thin edge between what we used to think was freedom and a plutocracy or oligarchy — if we haven’t already crossed that line. Time will tell us soon enough.
Shallow people are stupid. I don’t mean they have a “low IQ.” I mean they are too limited, lazy, selfish, and foolish to find out the truth. It’s so much easier to believe bullshit, isn’t it? You don’t have to read. You don’t need to research. You don’t need to know anything.
You can roll along, believing whatever the current blowhard in power tells you. That’s how we got where we are and that’s how we will keep rolling down the long grassy slope until we become one of those infamous shithole countries.
You’ve heard it all your life. You hear it at ball games. You hear it at every political rally, regardless of which party is telling you how great they are. Hell, we got an overdose of it during the 4th of July celebrations.
So now that there has been a “second” summit with Kim Jong-Un, described by him as “disappointing” (other translations say “depressing” and personally, I call them “futile and stupid” — and by Pompeo as “Not so bad” leaving the rest of us wondering “What summit? Was there a summit?” I have to again ask the question: What are we best at? Leaving out sports like football and baseball … what else?
Better health care? Better crime levels unless by “better” you also mean “more of them”? Where is America’s “sweet spot?” Good question, don’t you think?
But let’s get real for a second. Are we really number one? Are we the best country in the world? If so, at what?
Recently UNICEF released a “Child Well-Being in Rich Countries” study. They ranked 29 developed countries according to the well-being of their children on a number of factors. Where did the greatest nation in the world rank? Number one, right? Nope.
The US ranks #26. To be more specific we rank:
#26 for “Material Well-Being”.
#25 for “Health and Safety”.
#26 for “Infant Mortality Rates”.
#26 for “Low Birthweight”.
#22 for “Immunization Rates.
#27 for “Preschool Enrollment rates”.
#25 for “Participation in Further Education”.
#16 for “Overweight”.
#29 for “Teen-Pregnancy rates”.
#12 for “Being Bullied”.
It goes on. Were we #1 for anything? Yes. We were # for “Alcohol,” meaning we have the top rank for the absence of drunkenness. But considering our current government, can you blame the rest of the world for drinking more?
Another round for the world!
Republicans love to say that the U.S. has the greatest healthcare system in the world. The Commonwealth Fund ranks us #11 out of the 11 most developed nations. The World Health Organization ranks the U.S. #37 out of all the countries in the world. Just below Costa Rica and just above Slovenia.
But you know what we are best at? Putting people in jail.
From Wikipedia: “In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents 4.4% of the world’s population, it houses around 22 percent of the world’s prisoners.”
Take that North Korea! Take that all you Third World Dictators! We’re number one! Lock us up! Lock us up! Oh wait, we’re already doing that.
We’re number one!!
You know what else we’re good at?
Ripping children, toddlers, and babies from their mothers and fathers because they had the nerve to travel thousands of miles from their home countries seeking asylum because their lives are in danger. We’re number one at ignoring their screams as their parents get dragged away, having no idea why this is happening.
MCALLEN, TX – JUNE 12: A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
We’re number one at putting them in overcrowded cages.
We’re number one in putting them in outdoor tent cities where the daytime temperatures reach 100 degrees.
We’re number one at telling a parent who is in custody that his or child is “taking a bath,” only to find the child has been taken to some unknown facility 1000 miles away.
How do I know this? Because I can’t think of any other country doing this! I did a Google search. There was a country that did this and it didn’t end well for the country — or the children.
Germany 1933
It’s pretty much common consensus that our internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War 2 was the lowest point in our history — discounting slavery, of course. That would be lower.
This horrific excuse for an administration says they are just enforcing the law. Except there is no law that says you have to rip a baby from his mother while she’s breastfeeding!
Our Chump-in-Chief says: “It’s the Democrat’s fault!”
Wow, I didn’t see that coming.
The Director of Homeland Security says there is no policy of separating children from their parents and they’re not doing it.
I watched her say it on TV next to another screen showing kids being separated from parents and being put in detention camps.
The California top court ordered the Trump administration to get those families back together by the end of this month — July 27th. Anyone giving odds on this really happening?
The administration has basically admitted that they are doing this as a bargaining chip for getting that stupid fucking wall. Ponder that for a second.
One man was so distraught over losing his kid he hung himself while in detention. Pity about that. Give Trump his wall and maybe this can all go away. If there is a devil, he’s sitting in hell going WTF? Dudes, dial it back a bit! This is over the top for anyone with half a conscience.
There’s a difference between patriotism and nationalism.
A nationalist says “My Country, right or wrong. Love it or leave it.” They think our country is like a sports team you support no matter how badly they are doing.
A patriot says “I love our country but when our government is doing something wrong, we point it out and you are obliged to fix it. We’re not perfect. We can do better.”
My country right or wrong? Here’s the full quote.
Our country is not a sports team. We love to say that we are a nation of laws. Great. But shouldn’t we also be a nation of human beings? A nation of compassionate people with some modicum of decency?
We’re a nation of immigrants.
We all came from somewhere else. Except for Native Americans. If you want to get really technical, even they walked here from a land bridge from Russia around 50,000 years ago, so they’re immigrants too.
One of the most important icons of this country is the Statue of Liberty. The plaque on it has the famous words “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
It should be changed now to “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We’ll rip your kids away from you and huddle them into overcrowded detention centers.”
Something to think about as the end of the month approaches and the big day of the reunification of immigrant children and their parents is on the schedule.
I’ve made a point of trying to find some sliver of humor in any of the blogs I write. I have to admit I got nothing on this one. I even teared up a few times while I wrote it. So I’ll try to end with a joke.
How many Trump administration people does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer? 20,010. One to change the bulb, three to blame the bulbs failure on the Democrats, three to blame it on Hilary and Obama, three to say the bulb didn’t need to be changed in the first place, and 20,000 ICE employees to commit horrific acts of child abuse.
Because most of us are rational, we not only loathe the guy running our government. We also really want to know how he became such an awful person. We all know people — some of us are those people — who grew up with abusive parents. Desperately poverty. Rich and privileged, lower, middle, or undefined class. One of many children. An only child. Male. Female. Other.
By: Dreamicus
Most of us turned out okay. Even those who have (had) (still have) a lot of issues were never completely loathsome. All of us had a few good points. Someone thought we were okay.
But then, there’s Donald J. Trump.
So I thought I’d run a little survey.
QUESTION:
His father was a pretty ugly guy in his own right. A racist slumlord, I’m sure he passed his beliefs to his kid. But other people have rotten parents and they don’t grow up just like them. Rich and poor, children can grow into decent people, no matter how they began.
What made the difference? If it wasn’t a contract with the dark one? A television renewal failure? What happened to turn a rich asshole into the pit of evil?
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The book is entirely about good and evil. The great evil that is Sauron. The somewhat lesser evil of his cohorts. The striving evil of Saruman, and the fear of everyone in the battle that they can find the right way and stay woven in the fabric of good.
