To
be clear, I despise this man. Okay? I don't want to be accused of
partisan bias here, because that is NOT the point of this message.
I'm Jim Fenolio, and I deeply despise Donald Trump. I think that anyone who says "grab them by the pussy" is not only unfit for the presidency, but unfit to call themselves a lot of the 'positive spin' adjectives he likes to use. I think he's a dishonest con man looking to bilk the US out of billions of dollars for his own personal gain. I think he's morally bankrupt and will say/do whatever his base will support. That's why he'll ignore environmental laws and immigration laws to build the wall, because his base has a lot of people who think immigrants are all rapists and murderers...wonder where they'd get that idea. I don't like Donald Trump.
But when I look at the image below (a screenshot I took about 5 minutes ago from Yahoo main page) I see that at this moment, according to Yahoo, who I think is more than a little liberally slanted (which is absolutely their right), that the most important thing they can focus on and tell you about is that in the face of this natural disaster, Trump is golfing. From that same image, there's a story about the Bahamas pleading for help. Yahoo chose to make sure to get a dig in on Trump, above making sure that people were aware that the Bahamas are in a bad way. That's point 1.
Point 2 is simply that Dorian is a force of nature. On a scope and scale that humanity isn't even remotely close to standing up to. Sure we know how to make buildings more earthquake proof, but I promise you...the earth has a shaker built into it that would render the best minds and buildings to rubble. Not to say we don't try to mitigate the damage, but come on...for hurricanes the best we've come up with is to put sand in bags and stack them up and hope nature doesn't decide to just ignore our puny attempts to thwart it and wreak pure havoc. All we can do is put our best attempt to protect ourselves into practice and hope it's enough. Does anyone think that this man golfing in ANY way will affect the outcome of Dorian? The person that for decades has held the title of "Most Powerful Man on Earth" can't do anything. Do we really think that the internal workings of the government today are all that different than Obama when it comes to trying to defend our citizens against this kind of threat? Does anyone really think that Trump told the best minds to go home and enjoy the long weekend? Or are there likely hundreds if not thousands of actual experts still trying to coordinate evacuation paths, etc.? Is Trump really a key cog in that machine? <Remember, I hate this guy okay?> I say no. I say at this point, politics and policy of the last few hundred years have built a system that we are bringing to bear as best we can. Thousands of years of economic and scientific development, all weighing down on this one moment as humanity (yet again) braces to deal with the aftermath of nature doing what it does. A tempest will be just that. <----Tool Reference. From that perspective, calling out Trump for golfing today is functionally no different than if Fox News had criticized Obama during one of these for going to Camp David with his family to ride it out. They both engaged the government resources as best they can (relatively) and then surrendered control and went off to try and do exactly what most people are doing. Forgetting for a moment that millions of lives are at stake (our own included) and trying to occupy their minds with something they can understand/control. That is point 2. Nothing this man can do will help in any way, and my gut says that even he gave his best marching orders to the agencies involved. So choosing to be outraged by this, and put it as their top story, is a bit telling about Yahoo and their biases and priorities.
Not that I besmirch them that right, but there is a second level to this which is that there are people out there (lots in fact) that take things like Yahoo (or Fox News, or CNN, or The Daily Show, or George Carlin, etc.) seriously as though it is, coming down a few orders of magnitude, "gospel". As if these people speak an objective truth, just because it resonates with our own personal biases, so we can't help but be influenced. John Hemm, I assure you there is a dude (somewhere in the backwoods of Klan land) that believes with every bit of certainty and every bit to his core that you are a wretched sinner and don't deserve god's love. He believes that with every fiber of his being, in the same way that you believe in being true to yourself with every fiber of yours. And if all this was, ended up being about thought. Private thought never shared or never acted upon, I would defend his right as a human (above as an American) to feel how he feels. Just as I'd defend yours. When this comes into the real world and political sphere, things change...but at it's core, I think letting humans try to live a life as they choose is paramount. So long as that "life living" doesn't negatively impact a single other humans ability to have the same freedom. And whenever those lines conflict, it's up to society and our legal system to protect the rights of both parties as best they can. Let that ignorant, hating, son of a bitch suffer in the life of anger that has to exist in their heart. That is truly their punishment. And you John Hemm, you go out and be you (as you do, with zero fucks given...and for that you're a hero of mine), and at that moment I'd say you have objectively won. You end up in a world of love and self love, he ends up in a world of hate and I have to imagine self-doubt. In this world, how could he not? Liberal morality running rampant (for the better IMO), he must constantly feel like everyone (or most everyone) hates him and his 'kind'. So he latches onto the only support group he has. Likeminded bigots. And can we all see the echo chamber here? And John Hemm, sorry to keep invoking you here, but would you honestly say that there isn't some "echo chamber" in that gay community? Not to say you don't absolutely deserve that kind of unwavering support, because you do. You absolutely do. But in an ironic sense, doesn't some of that just fan the flames of conflict? Not that it shouldn't. If you feel like your personal belief 'bubble' is being threatened, I'd expect you to defend it with all the vigor you can muster. And in the end, the right side will 'win'. I'd only ask that you remember that you're fighting for your bubble, and they are fighting for theirs. And the more we opt to make that fight/engagement an angry one (a war in a way), the more entrenched our enemy will get. It's human nature. And maybe for the individual that tries to walk across that battlefield, being slaughtered by the enemy or ostracized by our friends it would be a HUGE sacrifice. Wouldn't those exact people who walked into the fray to try to deescalate the conflict be heralded by both sides as heroes?
How much of the latter half of that last paragraph did you read as a "biased" individual? Intentionally I didn't use any right/left, good/bad, democrat/republican, etc. verbiage in there. I let your own biases fill in the intrinsic good/bad sides. Go back and reread it and ask yourself if you actually believe the person on "the other side" would feel differently.
Getting back to the core of this post, I'd then ask anyone of any belief system. Stop thinking in terms of good-bad or right-wrong, and instead think in terms of how your "bizarro-you" (comic book reference to Superman and his evil twin, that is opposite him in every way) might see this exact same news article. For someone with a strong liberal bias, this probably fits in well with the human characteristic of confirmational bias. Simply stated that the world is too vast to ever understand it all, so we have to rely on the collective wisdom of society (filtered through the biases of our own experience) for information and we just have to trust some of it. Your parent's say don't touch something because it's hot. Their stern demeanor is probably scary for a child and you get a negative feedback. You touch that hot thing and you get a BIGGER negative feedback. Your mom says "Jesus is your savior", or, "there is no god". You're an infant monkey...how do you challenge that? You don't. It becomes part of the core you (WITH BIASES). Equally a person with a strong conservative bias might see the same article and think that it's just another example of the "Fake News" contingent. And in this case, I'd agree with them.
I'm Jim Fenolio and I think that Donald Trump as President of the USA is a stain on the very fabric of what this country is meant to be. And that same Jim Fenolio says that this movement toward collective outrage for the sake of outrage is getting out of hand. The media outlets that have given in to political biases and are looking to capture a short term uptick in viewers because they tickle the appropriate fear buttons (Fox and MSNBC both do this btw) which in turn gets clicks and views. They are NOT serving your best interest. They are serving a purpose however. The world actually is too complex for us to on a second by second basis actually come to terms with. It just is. We can spend 13+ years in school learning what society tells us to learn, but at the end of the day, there is a practical extension of those lessons that get replaced with "news". Good or bad, right or wrong, we jack in to the news (used to do it via newspapers, radio, and TV and to a degree still do) and try to filter that information to help us have a greater sense of self, and how we collectively fit in a world that is just too damn big to actually wrap our heads around. Can we really fault someone for "picking the wrong" media outlet? Or worse, blame them for having an upbringing that to a degree picked it for them? Can you really blame a Muslim for being a Muslim, raised in an Islamic family any more than you could blame a Christian for being raised by Christian parents?
And if any of that makes sense, isn't it fair to say that we all, collectively and individually, have our own biases (as do the societies we're born into) and that maybe...just maybe the people who seem to run counter to us are actually almost exactly the same? They want love, acceptance, food, water, sex, housing, a new BMW, the perfect spouse, an amazing job, money (and by extension the freedom that comes with it), and did I mention acceptance? Aren't those all to some degree core themes to the basic beings of all humans? I mean obviously aside from the BMW comment. Mercedes is obviously superior. <-------sarcasm, in case that's not clear. But yeah, if the only thing that's really wrong with our "enemy" is that maybe they were raised in an environment that runs directly counter to your beliefs (be they political, sexual, or otherwise) and as such are actually someone that is fundamentally the same as we are...if we could just look past that one thing. So that's what I'm asking here. Try to look past that one thing. Don't diminish it, nor the impact that doing so directly has on your views of self and being. But just try to imagine that this person isn't really your enemy, just someone that is different, and CANT HELP THEMSELVES but to act in accordance with their own biases. Just like you.
In essence, what I'm asking of everyone is just to try. Just try to remember that just because it comes from Fox News doesn't make it bad okay? Just because a gay person says it, doesn't mean it's tainted with sin. And just because a liberal says "Let the gays get married", they're not trying to fuck with your religion and to destroy the sanctity of what society has classically defined as marriage.
Sidenote: I don't think you're likely to find a lot of gays trying to get married in religious venues that actively discourage their lifestyle. They're not trying to do that. They're trying to get the same rights as you get by marrying a woman in the legal system we have today. Like it or not, there are financial benefits to being married in this country. There are tax incentives. There are legal ramifications when it comes to how we treat death and property. There just is something (somethingS actually) that married people have access to, that couples who aren't married don't. So from an equality standpoint they're just trying to get equal treatment. I'd guess that the government doing away with the current involvement with marriage would be equally acceptable to them, but UNBELIEVABLY bad for supporters of traditional marriage. Aside over.
I truly believe that most people in this world are just trying to "get along". There's way too much evidence I've seen where people across all backgrounds and beliefs react to certain things (go watch any video on YouTube that talks about fair play in sports), specifically the things that we all hold as "the best of us". Watching a person help an old lady across the street, or someone stepping between a bully and his victim, tends to draw a positive swell of emotion in most people. I can't define it, and maybe it hasn't been defined. Or maybe we live in a time where we can objectively understand why this happens. What I do believe (because injuncting knowledge here seems a bit arrogant) is that there are central things to us all that if we can fight the urge to equate outsiders and their beliefs as intrinsically bad, we can start to connect with others we might have been unable to before.
I'll leave you with this, and I'll post the video in the comments if anyone wants it. I've posted it before. It's from a TED talk where a black guy got in contact with (as I remember) a grand wizard of the KKK and started out getting an interview. That oddly led to him attending KKK rallies, and eventually the wizard having to justify to his flock that this black guy isn't an enemy, just some lesser being...which in turn broke off completely because I guarantee that one day he was faced with accepting this guy as an equal human. A guy he has seen and interacted with regularly. A guy that in all other ways has become a friend to him. And then he realized that no person he called a friend can possibly be less than him. So the hate disappeared. The black guy was essentially one of those brave enemies that threw their hands up in surrender for the greater good. And objectively, I think the world ended up a better place. One less person who is focused so much on hating another (for whatever reason, no matter how solid the justification), and one more example of where real humanity and the ability to break down barriers get's logged in the history books. So remember that. A black guy infiltrated the KKK and broke one of their leaders away from that message. Don't see the others as potential converts to "your way" of thinking. See them as humans just trying to live their lives, treat them as such and I suspect humanity will thank you. Every little act of defiance to our biases is a victory. Even if you challenge that bias and still come away committed to what it says/means...just the fact that you were humble enough to doubt and make a decision willfully is a victory.
Love your friends. And love your enemies too. Remember that they love someone (wife/child/parent) with all the same passion as you, and if you ever looked past the differences I'd bet you'd find someone you'd be willing to befriend...or love...or sacrifice for...or even die for. Not for their causes and choices, but for the person inside once you've dispensed with the impulse to distrust or hate them for being different.
I'm Jim Fenolio, and I deeply despise Donald Trump. I think that anyone who says "grab them by the pussy" is not only unfit for the presidency, but unfit to call themselves a lot of the 'positive spin' adjectives he likes to use. I think he's a dishonest con man looking to bilk the US out of billions of dollars for his own personal gain. I think he's morally bankrupt and will say/do whatever his base will support. That's why he'll ignore environmental laws and immigration laws to build the wall, because his base has a lot of people who think immigrants are all rapists and murderers...wonder where they'd get that idea. I don't like Donald Trump.
But when I look at the image below (a screenshot I took about 5 minutes ago from Yahoo main page) I see that at this moment, according to Yahoo, who I think is more than a little liberally slanted (which is absolutely their right), that the most important thing they can focus on and tell you about is that in the face of this natural disaster, Trump is golfing. From that same image, there's a story about the Bahamas pleading for help. Yahoo chose to make sure to get a dig in on Trump, above making sure that people were aware that the Bahamas are in a bad way. That's point 1.
Point 2 is simply that Dorian is a force of nature. On a scope and scale that humanity isn't even remotely close to standing up to. Sure we know how to make buildings more earthquake proof, but I promise you...the earth has a shaker built into it that would render the best minds and buildings to rubble. Not to say we don't try to mitigate the damage, but come on...for hurricanes the best we've come up with is to put sand in bags and stack them up and hope nature doesn't decide to just ignore our puny attempts to thwart it and wreak pure havoc. All we can do is put our best attempt to protect ourselves into practice and hope it's enough. Does anyone think that this man golfing in ANY way will affect the outcome of Dorian? The person that for decades has held the title of "Most Powerful Man on Earth" can't do anything. Do we really think that the internal workings of the government today are all that different than Obama when it comes to trying to defend our citizens against this kind of threat? Does anyone really think that Trump told the best minds to go home and enjoy the long weekend? Or are there likely hundreds if not thousands of actual experts still trying to coordinate evacuation paths, etc.? Is Trump really a key cog in that machine? <Remember, I hate this guy okay?> I say no. I say at this point, politics and policy of the last few hundred years have built a system that we are bringing to bear as best we can. Thousands of years of economic and scientific development, all weighing down on this one moment as humanity (yet again) braces to deal with the aftermath of nature doing what it does. A tempest will be just that. <----Tool Reference. From that perspective, calling out Trump for golfing today is functionally no different than if Fox News had criticized Obama during one of these for going to Camp David with his family to ride it out. They both engaged the government resources as best they can (relatively) and then surrendered control and went off to try and do exactly what most people are doing. Forgetting for a moment that millions of lives are at stake (our own included) and trying to occupy their minds with something they can understand/control. That is point 2. Nothing this man can do will help in any way, and my gut says that even he gave his best marching orders to the agencies involved. So choosing to be outraged by this, and put it as their top story, is a bit telling about Yahoo and their biases and priorities.
Not that I besmirch them that right, but there is a second level to this which is that there are people out there (lots in fact) that take things like Yahoo (or Fox News, or CNN, or The Daily Show, or George Carlin, etc.) seriously as though it is, coming down a few orders of magnitude, "gospel". As if these people speak an objective truth, just because it resonates with our own personal biases, so we can't help but be influenced. John Hemm, I assure you there is a dude (somewhere in the backwoods of Klan land) that believes with every bit of certainty and every bit to his core that you are a wretched sinner and don't deserve god's love. He believes that with every fiber of his being, in the same way that you believe in being true to yourself with every fiber of yours. And if all this was, ended up being about thought. Private thought never shared or never acted upon, I would defend his right as a human (above as an American) to feel how he feels. Just as I'd defend yours. When this comes into the real world and political sphere, things change...but at it's core, I think letting humans try to live a life as they choose is paramount. So long as that "life living" doesn't negatively impact a single other humans ability to have the same freedom. And whenever those lines conflict, it's up to society and our legal system to protect the rights of both parties as best they can. Let that ignorant, hating, son of a bitch suffer in the life of anger that has to exist in their heart. That is truly their punishment. And you John Hemm, you go out and be you (as you do, with zero fucks given...and for that you're a hero of mine), and at that moment I'd say you have objectively won. You end up in a world of love and self love, he ends up in a world of hate and I have to imagine self-doubt. In this world, how could he not? Liberal morality running rampant (for the better IMO), he must constantly feel like everyone (or most everyone) hates him and his 'kind'. So he latches onto the only support group he has. Likeminded bigots. And can we all see the echo chamber here? And John Hemm, sorry to keep invoking you here, but would you honestly say that there isn't some "echo chamber" in that gay community? Not to say you don't absolutely deserve that kind of unwavering support, because you do. You absolutely do. But in an ironic sense, doesn't some of that just fan the flames of conflict? Not that it shouldn't. If you feel like your personal belief 'bubble' is being threatened, I'd expect you to defend it with all the vigor you can muster. And in the end, the right side will 'win'. I'd only ask that you remember that you're fighting for your bubble, and they are fighting for theirs. And the more we opt to make that fight/engagement an angry one (a war in a way), the more entrenched our enemy will get. It's human nature. And maybe for the individual that tries to walk across that battlefield, being slaughtered by the enemy or ostracized by our friends it would be a HUGE sacrifice. Wouldn't those exact people who walked into the fray to try to deescalate the conflict be heralded by both sides as heroes?
How much of the latter half of that last paragraph did you read as a "biased" individual? Intentionally I didn't use any right/left, good/bad, democrat/republican, etc. verbiage in there. I let your own biases fill in the intrinsic good/bad sides. Go back and reread it and ask yourself if you actually believe the person on "the other side" would feel differently.
Getting back to the core of this post, I'd then ask anyone of any belief system. Stop thinking in terms of good-bad or right-wrong, and instead think in terms of how your "bizarro-you" (comic book reference to Superman and his evil twin, that is opposite him in every way) might see this exact same news article. For someone with a strong liberal bias, this probably fits in well with the human characteristic of confirmational bias. Simply stated that the world is too vast to ever understand it all, so we have to rely on the collective wisdom of society (filtered through the biases of our own experience) for information and we just have to trust some of it. Your parent's say don't touch something because it's hot. Their stern demeanor is probably scary for a child and you get a negative feedback. You touch that hot thing and you get a BIGGER negative feedback. Your mom says "Jesus is your savior", or, "there is no god". You're an infant monkey...how do you challenge that? You don't. It becomes part of the core you (WITH BIASES). Equally a person with a strong conservative bias might see the same article and think that it's just another example of the "Fake News" contingent. And in this case, I'd agree with them.
I'm Jim Fenolio and I think that Donald Trump as President of the USA is a stain on the very fabric of what this country is meant to be. And that same Jim Fenolio says that this movement toward collective outrage for the sake of outrage is getting out of hand. The media outlets that have given in to political biases and are looking to capture a short term uptick in viewers because they tickle the appropriate fear buttons (Fox and MSNBC both do this btw) which in turn gets clicks and views. They are NOT serving your best interest. They are serving a purpose however. The world actually is too complex for us to on a second by second basis actually come to terms with. It just is. We can spend 13+ years in school learning what society tells us to learn, but at the end of the day, there is a practical extension of those lessons that get replaced with "news". Good or bad, right or wrong, we jack in to the news (used to do it via newspapers, radio, and TV and to a degree still do) and try to filter that information to help us have a greater sense of self, and how we collectively fit in a world that is just too damn big to actually wrap our heads around. Can we really fault someone for "picking the wrong" media outlet? Or worse, blame them for having an upbringing that to a degree picked it for them? Can you really blame a Muslim for being a Muslim, raised in an Islamic family any more than you could blame a Christian for being raised by Christian parents?
And if any of that makes sense, isn't it fair to say that we all, collectively and individually, have our own biases (as do the societies we're born into) and that maybe...just maybe the people who seem to run counter to us are actually almost exactly the same? They want love, acceptance, food, water, sex, housing, a new BMW, the perfect spouse, an amazing job, money (and by extension the freedom that comes with it), and did I mention acceptance? Aren't those all to some degree core themes to the basic beings of all humans? I mean obviously aside from the BMW comment. Mercedes is obviously superior. <-------sarcasm, in case that's not clear. But yeah, if the only thing that's really wrong with our "enemy" is that maybe they were raised in an environment that runs directly counter to your beliefs (be they political, sexual, or otherwise) and as such are actually someone that is fundamentally the same as we are...if we could just look past that one thing. So that's what I'm asking here. Try to look past that one thing. Don't diminish it, nor the impact that doing so directly has on your views of self and being. But just try to imagine that this person isn't really your enemy, just someone that is different, and CANT HELP THEMSELVES but to act in accordance with their own biases. Just like you.
In essence, what I'm asking of everyone is just to try. Just try to remember that just because it comes from Fox News doesn't make it bad okay? Just because a gay person says it, doesn't mean it's tainted with sin. And just because a liberal says "Let the gays get married", they're not trying to fuck with your religion and to destroy the sanctity of what society has classically defined as marriage.
Sidenote: I don't think you're likely to find a lot of gays trying to get married in religious venues that actively discourage their lifestyle. They're not trying to do that. They're trying to get the same rights as you get by marrying a woman in the legal system we have today. Like it or not, there are financial benefits to being married in this country. There are tax incentives. There are legal ramifications when it comes to how we treat death and property. There just is something (somethingS actually) that married people have access to, that couples who aren't married don't. So from an equality standpoint they're just trying to get equal treatment. I'd guess that the government doing away with the current involvement with marriage would be equally acceptable to them, but UNBELIEVABLY bad for supporters of traditional marriage. Aside over.
I truly believe that most people in this world are just trying to "get along". There's way too much evidence I've seen where people across all backgrounds and beliefs react to certain things (go watch any video on YouTube that talks about fair play in sports), specifically the things that we all hold as "the best of us". Watching a person help an old lady across the street, or someone stepping between a bully and his victim, tends to draw a positive swell of emotion in most people. I can't define it, and maybe it hasn't been defined. Or maybe we live in a time where we can objectively understand why this happens. What I do believe (because injuncting knowledge here seems a bit arrogant) is that there are central things to us all that if we can fight the urge to equate outsiders and their beliefs as intrinsically bad, we can start to connect with others we might have been unable to before.
I'll leave you with this, and I'll post the video in the comments if anyone wants it. I've posted it before. It's from a TED talk where a black guy got in contact with (as I remember) a grand wizard of the KKK and started out getting an interview. That oddly led to him attending KKK rallies, and eventually the wizard having to justify to his flock that this black guy isn't an enemy, just some lesser being...which in turn broke off completely because I guarantee that one day he was faced with accepting this guy as an equal human. A guy he has seen and interacted with regularly. A guy that in all other ways has become a friend to him. And then he realized that no person he called a friend can possibly be less than him. So the hate disappeared. The black guy was essentially one of those brave enemies that threw their hands up in surrender for the greater good. And objectively, I think the world ended up a better place. One less person who is focused so much on hating another (for whatever reason, no matter how solid the justification), and one more example of where real humanity and the ability to break down barriers get's logged in the history books. So remember that. A black guy infiltrated the KKK and broke one of their leaders away from that message. Don't see the others as potential converts to "your way" of thinking. See them as humans just trying to live their lives, treat them as such and I suspect humanity will thank you. Every little act of defiance to our biases is a victory. Even if you challenge that bias and still come away committed to what it says/means...just the fact that you were humble enough to doubt and make a decision willfully is a victory.
Love your friends. And love your enemies too. Remember that they love someone (wife/child/parent) with all the same passion as you, and if you ever looked past the differences I'd bet you'd find someone you'd be willing to befriend...or love...or sacrifice for...or even die for. Not for their causes and choices, but for the person inside once you've dispensed with the impulse to distrust or hate them for being different.
