Ugh Me Was Mad

Dear Blog,

I have been having a hard time writing to you lately…I thought bikes…blogs big deal. But it turned out your not as easy as I thought…I think what should I write? I get stumped and I hesitate. Then late at night I open you up and I start something, after a hour or so I reread what I wrote and then decide to save it. Not satisfied with it at all. I have done this several times. I watch blog after blog go up, and I feel silly. Quietly watching and reading someone else’s blog, counting how many, counting my own…and I know you have tons of my blogs hidden away in a draft folder, but I am too consumed with conceit and ego to dare post them. Then I come across this guys blog entitled “Let’s Nuke New Orleans“, it’s a good and disturbing read. The blogsite is described as this

Steady Earl ::Your most trusted source for right-wing, gun-nut, bicycle- and grammar-obsessed, and people-hating commentary for at least the past minute

Sure there is a little humor in the description, it’s what got me to look at it in the first place, and the mention of bikes…OK I know he is right wing…but I am open. He likes guns…well I come from a state were even the liberals are armed so it’s not a nutty concept to us country folk, we don’t have “gangsters” to get freaked about. We are a little more concerned with our own corrupt government having the only arms in town…so I am open to that part to.

Anyway…I hope no one gets too upset by that. I just come from a place, like Canada where we don’t hardly have violence as in our US cities…the issue to me is in our attitudes here, the rage aggression that never gets addressed…how can Canada have twice as many guns per household and far less violence? Here in the US there seems to be a really individualist nasty attitude towards each other, one that seems to allow people to nut out in their cars and use them as weapons, or rage at a flight attendant in the air, or snap at a waiter…I just think we need to focus on the issue of violence not the issue of what weapon is used.

Oh well my point was this guy is blogging this horrible thing about New Orleans and I am reading it with my mouth hanging open in shock…I don’t know why I am so shocked, I read the blogsite description beforehand, was I not prepared? He pisses me off enough to make a comment, which I see doesn’t get posted…so the guy wants to moderate them first…so I pretty much doubt he will put it up. Not only is his blog offensive…he is the kind of gun toting freak, that freaks me out, he is the epitome of American “Pull your self up by yer’ own boot straps” mentality…christ all those bootstrap ideologues had family to back them up, hardly anyone really pulls themselves up all by themselves, and when they do, they are seldom white males. I generalize here I know, but often those who do this are people of color and female… and they don’t get much credit for it either. Ross Perot said he did, but it was a lie, he was given his first start up capital by a family member. So many disadvantage people don’t have family with money, some don’t really have family.

But I realize this jerky guy is blogging….so why aren’t I?

I didn’t get to the bicycle stuff on his blog, I don’t even know if he has anything on it. That was what I was most curious about, a right wing cyclist…

This guy is spouting hate…but I told him that I knew it was just cynical dime a dozen B.S. anyone can pull that routine out of their pocket. What’s difficult is to think beyond yourself, to think beyond your own politics, your own viewpoint and your own intelligence…we really all come from the same cells, and somewhere down the line we decide how we are gonna be, what character we are going to create, based on our story line. Take this same guy, throw him in a brown skinned body, toss him into the “cess pool” he refers to New Orleans as, take away his job, his “white guy” opportunities, his car outta there and would his blog not sound a lot different…same person, yet different circumstances, creating another personality. Who are we really,beyond who we think we are? Who would we be if we were raised somewhere else, like in a small tribe in South America? Or on a trust fund, with unlimited opprotunity…who would we then create…maybe the one with all the fortune, is ignored, abused…but on the outside who would know the pain within? Maybe the tribesman possesses great intellect, but a limited vocabulary in english…thus to many native english speakers comes off as having a limited intelligence. It is so easy for us to assume things about others, by just hearing a little of their background without much detail. We jump to judgments, we classify, we reject based on what we want to presume of someone…I have met beautiful women who have no friends; everyone assumes beauty is some grand entrance into happiness and good fortune. Yet these women feel rejected by women who view them with contempt and assumption that their beauty makes them an automatic bitch. …or rich people who are depressed, and someone says, how can you be depressed when you have all the money in the world, or all the beauty in the world? As if these things solve mental illness, loss, emotional pain, as if they keep you from tragic losses, punches in the face, backstabbing…etc.

Even me with Steady Earl, the blogger…I was so angry at him, for being so insensitive…but who is he really…just a character like Rush?…They find a place to get power, maybe because their back story is filled with such feelings of powerlessness’. I don’t really know them. I only know what they project, and I question the truth in that. Maybe Steady Earl is really overly sensitive, and this is his way of protecting that. I wonder this because growing up, I was often picked on…I knew the pain of being the target of someone else’s rage and insecurity, yet years later I turned into that same bully…I became the very thing that I had so feared. It is easy to judge and admonish, it is far harder to understand, even when it doesn’t make sense. It is to place yourself in someone’s else’s character the best you can, to attempt to see from their viewpoint, even when it scares you…

I had a friend who was pro life and at first we argued, then came to an understanding she is a thoughtful person that way. Years later it helped me to again see the other side. I at first refused to understand the pro life stance. Then I thought what if I believed so strongly in God and Jesus, and my belief made me think that it was indeed murder? What would that be like. I was stunned, I understood. It was hard to understand, because I couldn’t not understand them anymore. Now I knew, and I had to face that new understanding as uncomfortable as it was. I still believe in choice, but I can’t ridicule those that don’t anymore. They believe as strongly as I believe, that is what we share.

I have always found it difficult to forgive my short lived oppression of others who were mirrors of my former self. And it took me years to see that every bully is most likely the result of having been bullied. Strangely we seek power from examples of power, even when we abhor those examples…it’s why for every driver that pisses me off, for every chain saw that cuts down a redwood, for every greedy corporation that “takes over”, that I try to look beyond what I think I know…everytime I swell with anger I wonder, is that not just me in a business suit, is that not me with a swastika tattooed on my forearm…and every time I think, is that not the same asshole driver I once was…I want to reject and separate myself from this thought. It complicates things, it is so much easier to place people in a box and toss them to the side of the room. I would like to do that often, but have gotten in the habit of opening the box now, even boxes that hold very uncomfortable items, items that scare the hell out of me. I can’t always figure it out, many things remain unsolved, and not understood at all.

I can’t hate Steady Earl, I can hate what he says…but that really isn’t hatred that I feel, it’s hurt. It hurt to read his blog. It hurts when someone is careless with your life by driving without regard to others safety, it hurts when someone ridicules me, or my viewpoints, it hurts when my government kills in my name, and it hurts when I remain silent about it. It hurts when the Right attacks my morals, it hurts and scares me. I can’t figure it all out, but I don’t want to become the very same thing I abhor, I don’t want to be a “better then them” bully anymore.

Oh well blog, if Steady Earl can go off, then I might as well too. I don’t’ mean to sound super conscientious or mighty thoughtful, like Steddy Eddy notes it’s “commentary for at least the past minute”, don’t worry, you know me blog…I’ll have some thing crop up that will throw it all in my face, and I’ll have to look at that too. It’s a nasty habit I got now.

Thanks blog, take care till the next time.