The Pendulum Swings

 

I am sorry to have to say this, but I am horrified by the outcome coming out of the Charlie Kirk assassination.

Truly.

Horrified.

I don’t think people understand what this means.

Pendulums swing.

They swing one way.

Then another.

The left in the western world has been careening off the rails for about a decade. At least. Two, maybe.

Seriously.

We just have. I know.

I’ve watched it happen. Please don’t deny it.

We are crazy.

Becoming the extreme, fascist, racist, intolerant, bigoted haters that we pretended to abhor. We became the thing we were supposed to hate. The things we were supposed to stand against. What I stood against my whole life.

The rest of us just looked on in dismay.

But most of us just hoped it would eventually blow off like the excess steam from an engine that was way beyond its station. Choo-choo!

If only.

But it only got worse. Bit by banal bit.

“OK,” some of us thought. “Sanity will prevail,” a lot of us thought, some of us, most of us, imagining that the pendulum would swing back to equilibrium.

“After all,” we thought. “People have slogged along for millennia, dragging the pendulum from one side to the other. Back and forth. Sometimes making progress. Sometimes regressing. But mostly just repeating the mistakes their ancestors had made long before and thinking themselves novel and enlightened for doing so. What’s so special about now?”

‘Now,’ it seems, is different.

The civil rights movement in the 1960’s did a great deal of good, forging and hammering legislation benefiting many people, marginalized people, people who had no voice before. And it did it without an actual revolution. No reign of terror. Yes, there were riots and deaths, but not to the scale of a complete overthrow of society! And I thank God for that.

I was proud to have witnessed that era and entered my young adulthood a better person for it. Or at least so I believed. So I behaved.

So made I my adult persona. A better person for it. So I thought.

As I became an adult I encountered many people of diverse backgrounds, races, creeds, and whatever. I worked in a shipyard and in a university. An insurance company and a pizza joint. Even flipped burgers. I saw all sorts of people.

And respected them all, equally. Or not, as their own merit and behavior deserved. We were supposed to treat everyone as equals, which included equal standards. Equal expectations. Evil is as evil does, I’m told. And so is good.

If you are good? I will be good to you. Otherwise? Not so much, but I will still treat you fairly.

People were people and should all be treated the same. With the same respect. And the same disdain. And held to the same standards. And given the same respect. And expected to behave in the same manner to every other person.

Or so I thought.

You are as good as me. Or as bad.

And I tried to do that, with the expected results. As a better man than me once said, “We tried our best, but things turned out as usual.”

How true.

We’ve all seen the results of the Woke culture of the last few decades, its excesses, its hubris, its power, its decline and now its demise. Its tries and its failures.

Now its demolition.

I fear the pendulum.

The pendulum swings.

When one movement goes too far. When it oversteps its bounds. When it gets caught up in its own hubris and superiority. And goes too far to one extreme side. And thinks too much of itself. Gets too big for its britches. Too self-ingratiating. Too magnanimous. And swings. And reaches its apex. And loses momentum. And freezes. And stands in horror at its own lack of motion at that apex. And is stunned.

A Wile E. Coyote moment.

And falls. And starts accelerating its way down the other side of the momentum curve. When that happens the opposite movement surges in. And sweeps it aside. And then overtakes it. Overcomes it. Overwhelms it. Overpowers it. And ultimately becomes it. Meet the new fresh idea, same as the old fresh idea.

The pendulum swings.

They say the universe abhors a vacuum.

Well. Momentum abhors a still point. The place in the middle. Where both sides can stop. Consider. Appreciate the other side. Nod in respect, even. Pass by each other gracefully. Gather their own momentum in response. Come up with a meaningful comeback. A thoughtful reply. Compromise. Find agreement. Mutual goals, even. Take a deep breath. Shake hands. Kiss. Embrace. And nod to each other. Friend to friend. Lover to lover.

And swing.

The pendulum must swing.

I only pray it does not swing too far in the opposite direction.

That would be horrible.

 

The Bronze Monster

People hear things like, ‘Pray for your persecutors,’ and, ‘Turn the other cheek,’ and say, “That’s not how the real world works. Change always takes place with massive power and punctuated with an exclamation point at the tip of a spear.”

Well, the tip of that spear may be coming to punctuate a community near you.

I’ve been watching US society; my country, my home, our home, can I call it our home?; hammering away at a bronze monster for decades. A monster called, ‘Division.’

Right vs. left. Man vs. woman. Black vs. white. Young vs. old. Gay vs. straight. Whatever vs. whatever-else. And we are starting to see its effects. A recent survey revealed that the United States’ population is more divided on fundamental issues than it has been in over a hundred years. That’s closer to the United States’ Civil War than it is to today.

Where are we going?

Modern, I use the word loosely, civil wars don’t work like in the old times. There won’t be men in uniforms of grey and blue standing off against each other firing cannonballs into each other’s ranks. No skirmishes in swamps and meadows followed by long trudges back to a blistering wasteland that once held their homes, their farms, and their lives. No executions of terrified soldiers or civilians at the gallows. No lonely buglers playing Taps at sunset.

Today’s civil wars, and there have been several, consist of divided people who come together at last, but the coming together of them is not one of reconciliation, it is one of retribution.

Knots and tangles of men and women decide that they’ve had enough, and they are not going to take it anymore. And then the bronze on their brows begins to shine.

That’s when the bronze monster awakens in them. That’s when they lose control of their senses, their minds, and their humanity.

In 2014 the government of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup. There had been peaceful protests going on for months, as is the right of a peaceful society. We have the right to speak our minds in a compelling manner and to express ourselves and be heard. And for once the government was listening to them and agreeing to some of their demands. There seemed to be the possibility of compromise.

Imagine that? What a concept!

But other factions seized control, stormed the capital, and took over the government. The people who took control and ultimately were declared ‘legitimate’ leaders, were scraped from amongst the worst dregs of Ukrainian society. People whose grandparents had welcomed the invading army of Europe’s worst times with parades and mugs of kvas and whose men, fathers, brothers, uncles, and sons, flooded to the battle.

“Me! Me!” they shouted. “I want to join!”

“To do what?” you might ask.

“To kill people we hate!” they replied.

That’s what they did. Field Marshall General Zhukov famously said later, “We delivered Europe from fascism, and they never forgave us for it.”

Understandably, the general population of Ukraine was horrified and began protesting across the country. Russia, who could have invaded then and there and restored order, held back, just supplying clandestine support to the Russians living in the Ukraine who were protesting and refusing to submit. And being massacred as a consequence. They didn’t understand. They weren’t prepared for it. Who could be?

Civil wars are like that today, don’t you know?

You are prepared for massacres, right? If we are talking about another civil war, massacring people at an industrial scale is essential.

In Odessa a group of protesters were set upon and fired upon by armed militants. They fled into an adjoining government building, a trade union building, for shelter and protection. The hostile group chained the doors shut and set the building on fire. People leapt from windows to their death or were shot trying to escape. The rest were burned alive.

And the militants? The murderers? The bronze monsters? Who were they? What happened to them?

They were just people. Ukrainians. Who had been citizens the day before. Ukrainian citizens. The guy and girl next door. Just like the people they killed. Just like that.

In the United States’ Civil War it was brother against brother. So it is in every civil war.

This is the face of civil war today.

That is what the bronze monster looks like.

This is the face in the mirror.

Are you ready for that?

No Exit

Ten years ago, maybe fifteen. Twenty. Max. Twenty? Going once? No more than that.

I had a crisis.

An existential crisis, if you will. Nothing Kafkaesque or No Exity. Sartre be damned. But in all accounts just as magnificent. Or maleficent. Or…

It was a question of who I am and why I am here.

Just that. No problem. No demand. Just a question.

What am I, exactly?

I don’t mean that metaphorically or allegorically or any other obtuse way. Just really. What do I stand for?

I stopped calling myself a liberal about ten years ago. Fifteen, maybe. I started referring to myself as a ‘1960’s liberal.’ I had to use that term last year talking to a young woman from California who was arguing for the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris. We were in a cafeteria in Kenya.

“Well,” I said. “My values have stayed the same for sixty years.” She didn’t get it.

Or maybe I should call myself a Classic Liberal, I suppose, if that’s a thing. Like Coke Classic. Or Pepsi-whatever.

Anything to distinguish myself from what pretends to be a liberal today.

I still believe in discussion.

In respect.

In the ability to find the best in every human I interact with, no matter who, what, why, or when or where they are the persons who life brought them to be today. On their paths in life. To their own destinies, as I am to all of mine. Would I like you to judge me? No? Then who am I to judge.

Who am I to judge?

Nobody.

Nobody at all. I am nobody’s judge.

And I am OK with that.

OK is the best I can expect from life.

And you?

I am starting to see YouTube videos of liberals, young people mostly, who have lost their jobs because of their vitriolic responses to the Charlie Kirk murder.

Seriously?

I am a believer in freedom of speech. No matter now deplorable or objectionable or despicable or downright just stupidable I find it. You still have the right to spout whatever you want from your face hole.

Have at it.

People are losing their jobs because of the dead-head, stupid-shit responses they are posting on whatever social media hot spot they haunt.

And they expect no consequences.

And it’s coming back to haunt them.

Karma’s a bitch.

What did they expect? That the conservative parts of the country would just lie down and die?

Part of me says, “Well, Bitch. You’ve been part of cancel culture, grown up with it as a matter of fact. That’s where you believe you have the right to run, vigilante style, across the anonymous internet and poison other people. Ruin their lives. Their careers. Their futures. Their families. Drive them to-I don’t know what! Because you feel that you are better than them?

“Let me say it again.

“Because you feel that you are better than them.

“Not that you just KNOW better than them. But that you ARE better than them.”

And that’s your fatal flaw.

I still consider myself a 1960’s Liberal. I still have some shreds of respect.

Existential crisis averted.

Not because we thought we were better than everyone else. We were assholes who thought we were something great, just like everyone else who came infinitely before us and disturbingly frequently after us.

All of us, assholes with big mouths and small minds. And a lot of conviction.

Because we were, and are, human.

Just like you.

Think of that.

Please.

Who are we?

How do we define ourselves?

The Left? Liberals? Progressives? Conservatives? Far one-way-or-the-other leftists and rightists?

Progressives! Is that what we think we are? How have we progressed? From where? To where? And to what end?

A man was shot. A man named Charlie Kirk. A debater. A scholar. A blogger. A modern man. Father. Husband. Citizen. Plain old Joe. American. Opinionated American. Like the rest of us. Our fellow American. Just like you and me.

Remember that phrase? Our fellow Americans? Politicians used to throw it around a lot back in the day. It rings a bell.

He was shot by a sniper. A military assassin. A military assassination.

Cold. Calculated. Clean, even. Neat.

The kind you see in movies. The day of the Jackel. Charles de Gaulle just barely missed. A hair’s breadth away. The bullet almost cleaned his morning shave for him.

Bang! Boom! Dead! That’s how it works, mostly.

Just like that. Whether from a grassy knoll or the corner of a book depository. Point blank by a blatant assassin from two feet away. Or from 200 meters away from a calculated, planned, choreographed extermination. Just like a bug zapper.

Bang! Zap! Dead!

He’s dead.

A man is dead.

For speaking his mind.

In a free society.

To free speaking people.

Young people.

In a university.

Young people who wanted to hear what he wanted to say.

As is their right.

Who were willing to listen to what he was willing to say.

As was his right.

And then decide for themselves if they agreed with what he said.

As is everyone’s right.

Like a free society should work.

And they shot him for it.

John F. Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy. Martin Luther King.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

Dead for speaking truth to power. And power struck back in the only way it knows how to.

Powerfully. Brutally. Deadly.

Last year in Pennsylvania it was the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. A nation was shocked. As was right. We’d better be shocked. If not, then God help us.

Agree with him? Loath him? Wish he would just shut the fuck up? Wish Donald Trump and all he stands for would just go away and disappear in a plume of his own hubris? POOF! Sometimes I do, too. OK. A lot of times I do. But then I think, “What comes next? If Donald goes, who takes his place? Be careful what you wish for.”

After all. My opinions are as free as yours.

But who wanted him dead? What sick mind wants that?

Who’s next?

My God. What have we become? Where are we going?

And what will we be when we get there?

Pray for the soul of America. While it’s still worth praying for.