I Have Been To The Mountaintop

I sometimes despair of anyone diving a damn about truth the way I do. These days, all people want is their truth, rather than the truth. There is no willingness to let go of pre-set notions, no desire to explore new possibilities, and people will seemingly shove broken glass into their eye-sockets and jam icepicks into their ears before they allow themselves to see or hear one new thing. All day and all night long there are talking heads whose full-time job is to do nothing else but spread hatred, fear and ignorance over the airwaves, and working stiffs everywhere listen to them – in their cars, at their workstations, or just watching the “news,” accepting it at face value without any filters. All the while these titans of the mainstream media will decry, of course, the mainstream media, as if somehow that’s not what they, themselves are.

And I wonder when it will end. When the fuck will this shit end?

That’s when I remember that, for all the fighting so-called conservatives do, they are always on the inevitable losing end. Read some of the transcripts of conservative radio broadcasts from the 1950's and you'll see what I'm talking about. They always lose! Yes, they have lately won in every political area except one – young people. Sure, the Young Republicans are big on campus, but they get bigger as the overall percentage of young conservatives get smaller, and what’s left of them are forced to huddle together for warmth. The percentage of people who embrace gay marriage among the next generation is ridiculously in the majority. So is the acceptance of evolution, and the rejection of fundamentalism.  The percentage of youth who are liberal is greater than it was when the Baby Boomers were young, and look what they nearly did! (Before they lost their way.)

This is why "conservatives" always lose and "liberals" always win. But damn, they sure do put up one hell of a fight on their way down!

The #1 media outlet for liberalism is The Daily Show. It’s a comedy.

Because what passes for conservatism today is a joke.

Do you believe government should dictate the terms of our everyday lives? Of course not. We all don’t. But if you’re a “conservative” you do!  Live and let live has nothing to do with the gay rights fight, according to you.  American freedom and pursuit of happiness be damned, you want Uncle Sam to roll into people’s private lives with an Abrams tank, rip the marriage certificates away from happy and committed couples who aren’t necessarily in your back yard.  You also want to tear the elderly’s ability to die with dignity away from them, even as they are desperate to preserve what they’ve worked so very hard for their entire lives.  You want to ruthlessly throw pregnant teenage girls into the endless jail of poverty and despair which is unprepared motherhood.  Why not throw away the key while you’re at it? Oh, but you do. You demand that they remain married to their irresponsible sperm-donors, as if knocking up a young girl were somehow indicator of being a young man with a bright future. You dare draw the line at conception when all of science shrieks that the brain defines the onset of a human being. You call this preserving the integrity of marriage? You call this “family values?”

If you’re conservative you believe in investing wisely. You believe in preserving your nest egg. Unless that nest egg happens to be our pretty, blue Planet Earth. Then you spend it like a drunken sailor, as if being broke afterward somehow didn’t mean our own demise. When you spot a downward trend in your stock portfolio, you adjust it, knowing that it’s not wise to put your money in jeopardy. Yet when that same downward trend manifests itself in climate, well, then, it’s no big deal, right? Just be an ostrich, poke your head in the sand, and it will all go away. Won’t it?

Your children smell your bullshit. They always have. They always will. It will take generations, but you will fail. You always do.

Can’t beat ‘em. Might as well join ‘em! Unless you’re the type who prefers to slowly and painfully pull the bandage away instead of just ripping it off and getting it over with. It takes all types.

Ah, but the generations it takes to pull that bandage slowly away are getting longer. The old farts who espouse the shit that plagues us just get older, and older, and older. It used to be that the cycle would only last 65 years. But 65 is young in human years today. Even one’s 80’s can be productive, and that means another 20 years of bullshit, at least. And the science they hate may help the old men who hate it live even longer, so that they can espouse even more climate-change denial, creationism, homeopathy and anti-vaccination crap.  Talk about biting the hand which feeds us!

Still, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Even though the distance to the end of the tunnel is getting greater.

I have been to the mountaintop. And I have looked over, and I have seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we, as a people, will get there!

Eric