Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Depraved


and indifferent.


As Iraq began stripped down to the studs any Republican pretense for caring for this country if it was going to actually cost them anything (Shared sacrifice? Oh fuck that! “Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.” is, as it turns out, only for the Little People. For “those people”. Whereas the melanin-poor-but-resource-rich feel it is their God Given right to wipe their asses with the Army ‘cause “they volunteered”.) so now has Katrina finished the job. What may go down in the books as the greatest natural disaster in our history completely sandblasted away the Compassionate Mardi Gras mask of the Party of God with 145 m.p.h. winds and has shown them to be what everyone who has not has been replaced by a pod has always known them to be.

Assholes.

Creepy, hateful assholes.

Wired up like a Doomsday Defense system long after the human operators have died, the GOP rank-and-file are on brain-dead automatic – a corpse face down on the accelerator – habitually and mechanically seeking in every tragedy to blame the weak, despise the dispossessed, defend their Dear Leader, and go after anyone who tries to interposed themselves between the truth and their inbred hick delusions like a pack of rabid jackals.

Who squirm and sizzle like the Devil himself up to his chin in a six-feet-and-rising tide of Holy Water when it looks like they may have to reap a little of whirlwind they have so assiduously sown for the last 30 years.

They have been more genteel about the loathsome baselines of their souls lately, piling up preachers and think tanks like sandbags around their position. Sending Kenny-boy Mehlman out to bat his horsey eyes, and flutter his dainty fan and truckle gigglingly on, “Oh, my. Ah do declare, suh, that once upon a time, looong ago, we wuh the Party of Racist Bahstads, but a you can plainly see, suh, not any more. No suh; no bigots ‘round heah’.”

A tough trick to pull off with the American Swastika snapping proudly in the breeze above the Republican Party and Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond still using Trent Lott’s nose as a bung-candle, but I would argue that racism – while still alive, loud and proud that the rotten heart of the Party of God -- is just one of a series of fellow-traveling ideologies that make common cause against our nation, each for it’s own despicable agenda.

The broader, more descriptive and inclusive ideology that sums up the whole of the GOP – from the NeoCon fascists, to Christopath theocrats to the millions of just plain dumbfuck racists for whose throbbing electoral love the Republican Party gladly lubes itself up spreads ‘em – comes down to four, simple words.

Fuck Everyone But Me.

That’s what being a Republican comes down to in the end.

Those four, little words that mean so much.

The pillars of the Republican Party.

The basic “forward”, “forward”, “side”, “close” that make the formal steps of the Neocon Foxtrot identical to the Christopath Waltz.

Decade after decade, the GOP has burrowed away like the clever, eyeless rodents that they are, weakening the very bulwark that makes our nation possible. Gnawing away with their blood-stained razor-teeth at the very concept of the commonweal – the common good – itself. They have worked carefully, deliberately, patiently to rip the belly out of our Republic and breach the levee of our civilization...and now the filthy, mutagenic sludge roils through the streets, staining an polluting everything it touches.

We have lived to see “Fuck Everyone But Me” enshrined as a virtuous sentiment. And not just any virtue, but the Primum Mobile. The First Cause behind all other virtues -- by men who claim the mantle of God’s Favored -- while “Love Thy Neighbor” floats face-down in the noxious hellbrew they have worked so hard to unleash.

Fuck Everyone But Me.

The Guanine, Adanine, Cytosine, and Thamine that make up the base-pairs of the Modern GOP, interlacing themselves into ever more complex patterns and Rovian huckster patter, spiraling outwards into policy shops and pulpits, fractalling into think-tank White Papers and PNAC lucid dreams.

But unspool the complex helix of Republican thinking, map the GOP Genome backwards from any direction – theological, philosophical, economic, “scientific” – and it always comes down to the same, straightforward building blocks: Fuck Everyone But Me.

And see, this is where every Republican I know trips right over their own dicks every single fucking time.

Because there is no getting around the fact that Fuck Everyone But Me is a depraved and morally bankrupt philosophy.

And when you’re basic moral precept is Fuck Everyone But Me, you back yourself into a corner where you look absolutely ridiculous trying to judge or mock anyone else’s moral choices. What do you care who adults sleep with or marry? What do you care if terrorists kill Americans, as long as they’re not you. From what high moral ground do you get off prattling on about the various sins of Bill Clinton or anyone else?

Don’t get me wrong; it is at least an honest philosophy, and if Republicans were ever honest for five consecutive minutes they’d just own up to the fact that the loathe their fellow man and women on a sliding scale that reaches its zenith when the people on the business end of the shotgun are Poor and/or Black.

Republicans don’t give a shit if “those people” live or die as long as they don’t live or die near them.

As long as their taxes don’t go to them in any way shape or form. As long as they stay in their place, and pump prices stay low. But if brown people have to be killed in their millions to keep Republican’s tanks full of cheap gas, fuck ‘em. If Republican’s have to choose between their poorer, browner fellow citizens living in abject poverty and despair, and a $600 tax cut, fuck ‘em.

It's not even close.

So it’s an honest ideology, in the same way that offering human sacrifices to summon Satan would be a sincere expression of belief.

So what?

No faith or philosophy of any kind with which I am familiar has ever held that Fuck Everyone But Me is anything but bestial and depraved, so how did it become the watermark on Party of God’s stationary?

Well, they had to make it up from scratch, and it took a lot of time and money.

A moral philosophy – whether it wears the God-pants of not – has, for the most part, one purpose. To uplift. To spell out an ideal ethical stance for a Good Man or a Reasonable Man or a Godly Man to take, and then the threaten or cajole or persuade we poor creatures, stranded, as Twain said, “...between he angels and the French” to strive towards that standard.

I have no idea how many of the Nine Billion Names of God are Sacred and True, but I do know this for God Damned Sure: if your –ism demands that you do make yourself occasionally uncomfortable in the service of your fellow man, it’s on the right track. If it demands that you love more and hate less, act with empathy and fucking well feel bad when you act like a shit...you’re on the right bus.

If your faith says you damned well are your brother’s keeper and slaps you cold and wet across the face when you try to shirk your duty, sign me up.

Nature, Kate Hepburn reminds us in The African Queen, is “what we are put on this Earth to overcome."

Not the oceans or the they skies, but ourselves. Our own killer ape instinct to fuck everything that moves, and kill everything that doesn’t smell like us.

And as true as it is that when your faith demands that you work hard to be better than your most rapacious instincts call you to be, you know you’re headed in the right direction, so it is equally true that if your faith tells you to indulge your worst impulses – to positively revel in them -- then you know you are serving a very dark master indeed.

When your –ism informs you that there are two kinds of people – Us and Them – and “they” are inherently your moral or spiritual inferior, and encourages you to believe that “those people” (whoever “those people” are this week) aren’t fully human and don't deserve your help and respect, then your –ism is evil.

Period.

And what does every instrument in the GOP orchestra do but harmonize to try to provide moral cover for the core idea of Fuck Everyone But Me. Unlike the other Great Beliefs, the GOP –ism wasn’t built forward from insight and wisdom, but has been built backwards to justify their pre-existing bigotries. It is an invented-ideology, specifically constructed to spec to relieve Republican swine of the guilt that any human being should feel when they do Bad Things.

In quick strokes...

GOP “ Science”
Attacking settled science like evolution, and yet touting bad pseduoscience drivel like the “The Bell Curve” that boils down to “Genetics has made the White Man superior to the Black Man.” It seeks to put across their debased dogma by tarting it up with fake science: to tell their thralls that they are not obligated to feel for those people or throw your tax dollars in their direction because they are Darwin’s Losers.

Science, it holds, gives it blessings to Fuck Everyone But Me.

GOP “Religion”
Nothing less than Preachers of Hate. Of us versus them. Of fags are ruining my country, and feminists and the ACLU are our digging the grave. Knee-jerk anti-Christians who are the direct, lineal spiritual descendents of the Bible pounders who defended slavery, and then took to the same pulpits in the same places to defend lynching and Jim Crow.

Conservative Christian Fundanmentalism is just Jebus for vicious, small-minded Dummies. A religion tailored for hateful, creeps who always need someone to loathe and feel superior to and blame for Every Bad Thing that happens.

The GOP Religion exists for the same reason the Taliban had an Office of Virtue and Vice, and is run by exactly the same kind of men...plus it comes with a final act – The Rapture –- which is all about “those people” finally being given the Almighty fucking over that the preachers of hate say they deserve, and all of “us” get to float away to an eternity of rhubarb pie and holy jug bands.

And the Republican God said; "Thou shalt Fuck Everyone But Thyself. In Jesus’ Name.”

GOP Economics.
I’m rich and getting insanely richer every day. They’re poor and stagnating. They fail because they are bad people. They are lost because they are bad people. They drowned because they were bad people, and bad people only understand pain. They don’t need help; they ust need to be punished, and then punished some more.

The economic beatings will continue until morale improves.


GOP plain, old, down-home American racism
This is the mutant 70-foot gator the Republicans keep trying to pretend isn’t in slithering around the room. The core of racism is the distilled, cancerous essence of Fuck Everyone But Me. From before the day when the we imbedded a 3/5th clause in our Constitution and hard-coded our racism for all the world to see, it has been the flatfooted belief of a large number of our fellow citizens that blacks are simply less than human. They went to war to protect their barbaric institution and customs that ALL were founded on the institution of Slavery.

They went to war again in the form of a carefully organized program of domestic terrorism to keep blacks from exercising their basic rights as humans, for the simple reason that millions of Americans were and still are fucking racists douchebags.

And now they have their own political party, and all the pig-lipstick in the Universe will never cover up the fact that the Dixicrats fled to the Republican Party in their millions precisely because the Party of Lincoln was willing and eager to whore itself for the scum of the Earth. Because for no other reason that raw political gain – for EXACTLY the same political reason that George Wallace said “no one will ever out-nigger me again” after he lost in his first run for Governor -- the GOP hung out a shingle that said, “Klansmen Welcome: We Hate Coons Too!.”


But I would argue that their default position isn’t hatred: their default position is Fuck Everyone But Me, that ramps right up into burning hatred at blinding speed whenever The Government tries to force them – through shame or taxes or busing or civil rights or the abolition of slavery or the overturning of Loving v. Virginia or whatever – into giving a shit about people they despise.

The Republican Party is the ugly consequence of Democracy itself. The unembraceable shadow. It is the moral rot that is left behind when we believe that we are Exceptional by virtue of genetics or economics or God. When we stop requiring an informed electorate, and begin breeding idiots who take their sustenance at the diseased teats of Hate Radio and Old Time Gospel Hour.

It is the sharp, bright line that separates an often foolish and weak fixer-upper Democratic Party from an unambiguously depraved Republican Party.

Democrats believe that racism, hateful hillbilly superstition fobbing itself of as theology and simple, down-home pig-ignorance are, y’know, BAD things that should be educated into extinction.

Republicans, on the other hand, cultivate that barbaric sewage as if it were prize-winning teacup roses. They coddle and cuddle and actively encourage it because without a steady stream of bigoted morons and self-righteous inbreds, lets face it, there would be no Republican Party.

When Moderates react with horror at what they saw in NOLA, and then whiplash themselves catatonic looking suddenly around in every direction at the bile that comes fountaining from the mouths of talk radio hosts, teevee commentators and former-First-Ladies-and-Mother-of-the-current-President, they are looking for safe harbor. Some bit of dry land from which they can express their outrage, and yet still pretend that despite decades of warning that their Party is run by these very monsters, they can somehow remain Republican and keep their souls.

That the thugs who run their Party aren’t really there, or maybe they’ll just magically dry up and blow away.

Sorry, that ship has long since sailed, and you fucking well know it and the roaring sound you hear are flocks of chickens darkening the sky as the come home to roost.

Moderates thought worshipping at the church of Fuck Everyone But Me was a pretty sweet deal: they got tax cuts, but more importantly they got soothing men in pastoral garb and $1,000 suits telling them that it was absolutely OK to behave like a selfish prick. That letting people rot was a far lesser sin that the Evil Government confiscating their hard-earned ducats to use for reason that do not benefit them directly.

After all, since they were little shits they’ve been taught that they know how to spend their money better than some Washington Bee-Euro-Crat.

The problem being, this is the attitude of a cranky stupid child and not a grown up who lives in the real world, and the election of 2004 can now be seen in retrospect for what it really was: a tantrum thrown by idiots.

It was the screaming of 59 million 5-year-old spoiled brats bellowing, “You can’t make me clean up after myself. You can’t make me pay for the war I ordered. You can’t make me look at the truth.”

And the answer is, tragically, we don’t have to. We never did.

Being warned to stop putting a loaded gun in you mouth isn’t a way for us to score debating points. It was a way for your fellow citizens to say, “Hey, dumbass; if that thing ever goes off you’re gonna be in a world of shit.”

And then it went Bang!

The consequences of Fuck Everyone But Me aren’t about politics. They’re about physics and causality. They’re about actions having inevitable consequences.

It doesn’t matter if you run you car off a cliff in Drive -- looking at the ground rushing up at you -- or in Reverse – looking at the clouds and pretty blue sky, gravity is going to have her merciless way with you either way.

And that is what we have been trying to tell you.

83 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't usually go in for cheering, but this is great, DG.

All this anger spinning around in me is like lava in a volcano, looking a vent, ANY vent, and I appreciate your vent.

Jake

Anonymous said...

You sum it up perfectly, but I always thought of their motto as "Screw you, I got mine." Fuck everyone but me sounds better, and yes Republicans are truly evil.

Anonymous said...

Just the FF's like GWB.

PWhit said...

Great Post Drift.

StealthBadger said...

I used to wonder where all the moderate Republicans came from. Then I think of all the people who must have seen Gordon Gekko say "Greed is Good," or any of the thousand other ways that the newly-liberated "Me" generation quite emphatically said to themselves "I was right, it really IS all about me!"

On hearing this, on being able to say this for the first time, in a black, twisted, evil version of the abuse victim who can finally name their agony, and know for certain that They Didn't Have It Coming, a little warm glow appeared in their shriveled, dessicated little hearts that was the basic momentum behind what we know as the Regan Revolution.

This is why airports, streets, carports, bicycles, and gerbils are being named for the man who never failed his Kitchen Cabinet. Because the people who supported him, through him, made exaclty what you're talking about the state religion. What you're seeing is gratitude. And it's disgusting what they're grateful for.

StealthBadger said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

and check out Aaron Glantz's piece on AW.Com.

It's alternate-day driving, for the country with the second richest oil reserves in the world.

Our military has closed many of Baghdad's main streets, for security reasons.

There are hundreds of U.S. Iraqi checkpoints in the city, to check licenses and catch violators of the odd-even policy.


The insanity of sending Iraqi oil to Turkey, to be refined, and then, Iraq buys it back, using U.S. funding to subsidize the deal, surely is not lost on the people of Baghdad.

This is the kind of thing that gets NO play in our MSM.

Zippo.

It needs to.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, Glantz's piece is title:

"Baghdad Traffic Jam"

It's a goodern...

Mister Roboto said...

What you're discussing in this post in merely a symptom of a great empire in terminal decline. I weep when I think about the future.

An Angry Old Broad said...

You nailed it Drifty,no holds barred.

I blame religion for much of this,it's through the hateful megachurches that this message of selfishness began becoming acceptable to white suburbia.Bonus is it gets to hide behind"freedom of religion" tax free.

I grew up with this,30 yrs ago was the beginning of the real shift.I was a kid,barely a teen when I saw it happen in my own family and amongst their friends.

This"religion"also advocates the destruction of families from within,I'm a casualty of that,tossed aside like so much trash,the topic of scorn,being ostracized,made fun of,looked down upon.Made to pay for being a "sinner",because if your family doesn't love or accept you,who will,that's the price?And all because I saw that my parents were not preparing me for real life,and dared to forge my own way,warts,mistakes and all.It's kind of hard to explain that to my kids,why their own grandparents ignore them but spend time with their church buddies grandkids.It goes against everything I ever tried to teach them.I have no idea how I escaped becoming like them,but it's something I fought against with everything I have.Instinctually,that fight began in earnest when I was maybe 9 or 10 and didn't know what the fuck was going on.I just knew it went against how I felt in my heart.I watched my parents impart this madness to my siblings,and at 17 when I was booted out the door for good,there was a PARTY my parents threw to celebrate,I shit you not.

I guess this is what pushed me into being a functional human sans religion,even though it took awhile.Recovery from that kind of upbringing is a long road.Fuck Everyone But Me sums up the people who raised me perfectly.

Anonymous said...

Yep,

"Fuck everyone but me"

has a more visceral impact than the words I had come up with,

"Authority figures giving people permission to be selfish and bigoted."

It makes me feel like I'm the cultural conservative.

1988dylan said...

If it weren't for that damned Otto Von Bismarck, we might still be serfs. The Royals wouldn't have had to lay all this groundwork, ie: the dummying down of society via "education" (really, the lack thereof). (Who the hell was Otto Von Bismarck, you ask? He was the guy with the bright idea of educating the peasants so they could work more efficiently. Once we wised up, we became a problem to the elites.) The repugs have been working steadily at putting us back where "we belong". Arguably, they've done a bang up job of it. Racism and Religion have been extremely helpful to their cause.

Anonymous said...

Amused to death...

Brilliant Drifty. Very, very good rant and right on target.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Nice, as usual.

But shouldn't it be "The economic beatings will continue until you're rich?"

Anonymous said...

Drifty, what did you put in your cereal this morning? You usually don't rant like that til mid-afternoon, when the news of the day has had time to sink in. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Drift, are you married? Because as David Cassidy so aptly put it: I think I love you.

Anonymous said...

You have really been knocking them out of the park for the past week.

All I have to add is that it is not only the Enligtenment moral code that provides uplift, but the science and the social structure. True science and engineering provides the material uplift that complements the moral uplift provided by enlightened moral codes. When the F* Everybody But Me types pervert science the kick the blocks out from under the future. Very soon we will have an object lesson of this when the diseases brewing in NOLA spread outward and the gutted public health services cannot contain them.

Anonymous said...

o sweet jesus u r awesome---

Anonymous said...

amen, brother DG, a thousand sweet amens.

Anonymous said...

Or as JK Galbraith put it more politely, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. " And there ain't one.

Anonymous said...

I've often tried to understand why everyone in my family is a Republican but me and my brother. We came to political awareness during the Reagan Years and were disgusted by the selfishness of the era. While the older generations clung to the idea that it was still the party of Lincoln, we ventured out into the world...literally, and saw what happens when you don't care for your fellow humans. It sucks, it really fucking sucks.

But they still can't see that. It comes down to "I worked hard for my money; so why should any of it go to *those* lazy people".

Because of things like NOLA. Because of things like children going hungry because their parents don't make enough to pay for the rent, electricity, and food. Because of the elderly who weren't able to save for their golden years and would otherwise have to live in utter poverty.

"Fuck Everyone but me" explains their attitude. And it saddens me and makes me want to cry.

-Angel

Anonymous said...

"IRAQ-IRAQ, DIDDLEDIDDLEDIDDLE; IRAQ-IRAQ, DIDDLEDIDDLEDIDDLE. SADAHMMN-SADDAHMMN, DIDDLEDIDDLEDIDDLE; SADAHMMN-SADDAHMMN, DIDDLEDIDDLEDIDDLE", As Bush would probably say & do in front of little boys.

Anonymous said...

And the Sydney, Au. Morning Herald just reported that the the Brits and the Aussies have "unofficially" told the Japanese they are considering withdrawing their troops by mid-2006. Since this comes just as the Japanese are about to renew their "committment" for an open-ended period, they are some pissed, especially since the main Aussie purpose is to protect the 600-man Japanese contingent, as they help with "reconstruction".

(How NOT to use quotes in every sentence, with all the bullshit that's involved in even talking about Iraq!)

It's like that Rodeo game, where 4 guys sit at a table in the arena, ostensibly playing poker, as a large, angry, Brahma bull is released from the chute.

The last one to stay in his chair, gets a couple of hundred bucks. (Is that enough to pay for a fractured pelvis?)

But "Last one sitting" in Iraq, is a little more serious, and it will be interesting to see which "cowboy" bails first.

Talabani seems confused, since, on his way to do the "liberation" photo-op with junor at the white house, he said that america would soon be able to pull out 50,000 troops. I guess he did a recount, and today said that if bushCo bails, the Turks would quickly invade Iraq, on the pretext of protecting the Turkman population in the north.
Which posit, sure sounds likely, to me...and whose fault is that?

So, there goes another part of the drawdown "plan", shot in the ass.

Is there any "plan" left.?

-

Terrible said...

Wonderful!!! Very fine wordsmithing!! And right on the money. I wanna see it posted on billboards everywhere!

Anonymous said...

From FEBM to FUBAR, all in five short Dubya years. But the setup took about thirty years.

parsec

Anonymous said...

The consequences of Fuck Everyone But Me aren’t about politics. They’re about physics and causality. They’re about actions having inevitable consequences.

Ain't that the truth?

Anonymous said...

Superbly energizing rant ! You nailed the monsters to the wall. Kaboom ! It's outta here !

Anonymous said...

This might be Drifty's Dark Side of the Moon, his OK Computer, his Revolver, in other words, his masterpiece that all others are judged against.

I work in the banking business (on the corporate side, not in a branch) and I'm surrouned by the type that Drifty outlines. Utter mediocrities who have thrived by playing the lame-ass corporate game, to the point where they're now able to afford to live in a distant gated exburb (2 hour drive each way), send their kids to Chistopath schools and afford the fishing boat. They can't or won't see that they're just cogs, utterly replaceable by people just like themselves; they're convinced that God Has Chosen Them to be Regional Vice President of Marketing, Southern California Region.

So many of them are *miserable* though--they're trapped. They've choosen a lifestyle that feeds on itself, that's not sustainable because the slightest blip--the bonus that doesn't quite come through, an unexpected large expense like major house repairs etc.--fucks them. I see so many men that work late hours just to avoid going home to their harridan wives and snot-faced kids, people that they themselves created by their Greed is Good ethos.

And I laugh. I may be a poor, pot-smoking hippie secretary, but I live a frugal life (except for music) and I'm able to adjust to circumstances better than people on 5 times the salary. It's amazing how easily these people are bought off: $600 tax cut? That's a nice meal and a movie for 2 once a month; that's what disgust me, really, their price isn't higher.

jurassicpork said...

Nice Horace ref, Driftie. Wilfred Owen, (1893-1918) the WW I poet. used it as the title of one of his best anti-war poems.

"It is both meet and sweet to die for one's country."

Luckily, there are such things as campaign contributions, the latter-day incarnation of the $300 that rich people could buy their way out of Civil War duty and send in proxies who couldn't afford to buy their way out.

You know, while I'd never openly advocate overthrowing the government, let me just say that, were it to be effected by elements more radical than I, I would not only not lose a wink of sleep over it but indeed, I'd sleep all the better knowing that those rapacious cocksuckers were finally swept off Capitol Hill.

Anonymous said...

"While the older generations clung to the idea that it was still the party of Lincoln..."

That makes me laugh. The GOP sold out to big business interests within 20 (10?) years of Lincoln's death. It was the party of Lincoln only while Lincoln was alive.

I think there is a parallel between Lincoln and Jesus and Muhammad: They were all exemplary people whose followers largely failed to follow their example.

driftglass said...

Thank you, one & all, most sincerely.

Sorry for the brevity of my reply, but I was sprinting from dusk til dawn yesterday and will be again today, and probably tomorrow.

Nothing exciting and nothing 28 hours of sleep, a two-hour massage and wallowing a few of nature's nicer vices wouldn't cure :-)

Ciao and thank you all again.

Anonymous said...

"Sorry, that ship has long since sailed, and you fucking well know it and the roaring sound you hear are flocks of chickens darkening the sky as the come home to roost"

What a fine use of language, Drifty. You just get better & better at putting into writing how I (and obviously others) feel. Rant on.

Annie
P.S. I totally agree with Crista.

Anonymous said...

Decade after decade, the GOP has burrowed away like the clever, eyeless rodents that they are, weakening the very bulwark that makes our nation possible. Gnawing away with their blood-stained razor-teeth at the very concept of the commonweal – the common good – itself.

Good Lord, that's almost Thompsonian in its pungent eloquence. Brilliant. I take it that you are a fan of HST?

Anonymous said...

Ditto to what Jake said. I've been surfing the blogs all day looking for this.

Thanks

Anonymous said...

I found your post via democraticunderground.com, and I'm glad I did.

It was, in a word, brilliant.

Brian de Ford said...

Great post. I agree with everything you said except one tiny part of it. This may seem like an over-response, but that tiny part is a very fundamental and important error. You say that a faith is on the right track if it says that you are your brother's keeper. No, no, no, no, no. NOOOOOOOO. I think I know what you were getting at but you expressed it with the wrong aphorism.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That comes closer to what needs to be expressed, but is still flawed. Just because somebody likes to be horsewhipped while having a cucumber rammed hard up their anus it doesn't mean that I do, so please do not do that unto me just because you'd love it if I did it unto you. Ask first! You shouldn't do something to/for somebody just because you mistakenly think you're doing them a favour. If you see somebody who needs help then ask him if he would like your help and give your help if he says yes. If you see somebody who looks like he needs help but he says that he has personal reasons for wanting to accomplish the task alone then leave him be.

You can't fix that with Do unto others as they would like you to do unto them. Obviously I'd love it if you gave me lots of money and (if you're of the appropriate sex) gave me oral sex.
So make that Do unto others as they would like you to do unto them insofar as it is not an undue imposition upon you given the circumstances. I'm not going to give you all my wealth and perhaps die from poverty shortly afterwards just because it would make you happy, but I might well lose my life diving into a lake in an attempt to rescue you.

A far better way of expressing your point is Be excellent to each other. That means being sensitive to the wishes of the other person, whether those wishes are to be helped or to be left alone. That means that somebody making undue demands upon me is not respecting my happiness and so I am under no obligation to comply because that would be me being excellent to him, not us being excellent to each other.

You may think that being your brother's keeper is merely another way of expressing the same concept but it's not. It's antithetical to being excellent to each other. Being one's brother's keeper means that one, rather than he, decides what is best for him. If stoning him to death for being gay has a slender chance of one's brother recanting his sexuality in the middle of the stoning, and that means one's brother can then join up with the invisible sky being, then that is what one does. His desires, wishes, thoughts and philosophy are of no import because one knows what's best for him. It is this attitude that results in most of the despicable acts of the religious in the name of doing good. It is this attitude that has resulted in religious persecution through the ages: "that other sect is destined for Hell anyway, so if we torture them to death and a few of them convert at the last moment we've done some good."

I don't want anybody to be my keeper. I don't want anybody to tell me that I may not commit adultery or masturbate or perform homosexual acts (in nearly 50 years of life I've never felt the urge to commit a homosexual act but I wouldn't want somebody to tell me I couldn't if I ever did have the urge) because their concept of the invisible sky being says those things are sinful. I don't want anybody to force me to go to their church once a week (as happened in many countries not too many centuries ago) because their concept of the invisible sky being says I must.

The founding fathers, products of the enlightenment, understood this and wrote the constitution accordingly. Succinctly summed up by JS Mill: "Your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose." The law exists to stop me punching you, not for you to stop me swinging my fist in the air just because fist-swinging is deeply sinful according to your concept of the invisible sky being. The law should not prevent me doing things that offend other adults, it should only seek to punish me for causing them actual injury (physical, pecuniary, or whatever).

I don't want anyone to be my keeper, but I do appreciate offers of help. If you drive along a country lane in heavy rain and see me walking then it would be nice if you offered me a lift. But don't try to force me to get into the car "for my own good" because I might have good reasons (good in my opinion and that's the only opinion that counts) for walking in heavy rain.

As William Ernest Henley put it in Invictus (about taking responsibility for one's destiny):

I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.

What he didn't say was "And there's no frigging way you're going to make my decisions for me because you're not my damned keeper."

Anonymous said...

drity,
i haven't dropped off,just kant keep up this read full time. life pulls and gotta keep my chin up. still love ya jus didnt want you to think i'd left ya cold.
u rock. but i cannot keep takin' it. the news is so so so bad. not givn up tho. keep it up as long as you can. merci. so glad that your'e here....

Kia said...

Responding to Brian De Ford:

Voltaire settled this question a long long time ago. His version of The Golden Rule was:

Do Not Do Others What You Would Not Want Them To Do To You.

Examples:

1) Do not try to convert me to your religion when I'm stuck sitting next to you on an airplane.

2) Do not leave me lying in a ditch at the side of the road dying of hunger and thirst.

3) Do not cheat me or lie to me.

4) Do not say that I deserve contempt, neglect, that my race or my culture or my poverty exempts me from compassion and fellow-feeling.

Try them on. Ask yourself if you would like to be in the position of having to ask someone for any of those things. It works.

You are your brother's keeper. You are the keeper of his liberty and your sister's liberty also, and of his respect. And if you don't offer respect and kindness and truth, generously, well, that's just that much less generosity and kindness and respect in the world. What you allow others to suffer, you do to yourself. That is a certainty.

There are two readings of the expression, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." One is the one most people mean which is "Ain't I a lucky fucker." The other one is a little more subtle, which is that that unfortunate person the sight of whom has prompted that reaction, is you.

You don't have to believe this. But I think driftglass is saying that if you don't believe it you are far far more likely to act like a shit. For my own part, I have never met a person who disavowed any fellow human claim on his or her conscience who I could say was an interesting person. It seems a sure way of making yourself a selfish dullard for life.

Kia said...

Responding to Brian De Ford:

Voltaire settled this question a long long time ago. His version of The Golden Rule was:

Do Not Do Others What You Would Not Want Them To Do To You.

Examples:

1) Do not try to convert me to your religion when I'm stuck sitting next to you on an airplane.

2) Do not leave me lying in a ditch at the side of the road dying of hunger and thirst.

3) Do not cheat me or lie to me.

4) Do not say that I deserve contempt, neglect, that my race or my culture or my poverty exempts me from compassion and fellow-feeling.

Try them on. Ask yourself if you would like to be in the position of having to ask someone for any of those things. It works.

You are your brother's keeper. You are the keeper of his liberty and your sister's liberty also, and of his respect. And if you don't offer respect and kindness and truth, generously, well, that's just that much less generosity and kindness and respect in the world. What you allow others to suffer, you do to yourself. That is a certainty.

There are two readings of the expression, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." One is the one most people mean which is "Ain't I a lucky fucker." The other one is a little more subtle, which is that that unfortunate person the sight of whom has prompted that reaction, is you.

You don't have to believe this. But I think driftglass is saying that if you don't believe it you are far far more likely to act like a shit. For my own part, I have never met a person who disavowed any fellow human claim on his or her conscience who I could say was an interesting person. It seems a sure way of making yourself a selfish dullard for life.

DominoLady said...

your words are a lens that focus what we all see and make it palpable. Thank you

Anonymous said...

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
Anatole France in The Red Lily (1894)

“When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: ‘Whose?’ ”
Don Marquis (1878-1937)

"How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?"
Samuel Johnson

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