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We don’t organize large rallies to protest hurricanes. No one advocates, and no government funds, attempts to eradicate hurricanes, despite their destructive and deadly nature. (Occasionally some idiot will propose dropping a nuclear bomb on one, but no one that dumb could ever get elected president. Oh, wait…) No one reviles hurricanes, or denies that they exist. No one blames the president for the hurricanes that occur during his term of office. At least not yet. No one campaigns on behalf of hurricanes, trying to persuade us to understand them better, except weather forecasters when one is approaching and they all run out to stand in the rain and the blowing debris to tell us not to do that.
In general, we’re quite sensible about hurricanes, accepting them as a part of the world we inhabit without investing them with any particular political, moral or religious values. (A few exceptions, I know.)
The ancient Vedas teach us, if I understand correctly, that we should take a similar view of evil. Instead of screaming our hatred of it, trying to rid the world of it (which is akin to trying to rid the world of hurricanes), fighting it, and fearing it — all of which are detrimental to our own digestion, health, and peace of mind — we should simply note its existence. As with hurricanes, acknowledge the presence of evil in the world, and carry on.
This is not fatalism. We are expected to protect ourselves from evil, as from hurricanes, preferably by avoiding it. We are expected to guard against becoming evil ourselves. But as to the thing itself — acceptance is the ticket to tranquility.
I propose that we apply that technique to the whole Trump cult that has lately fouled American politics and government. Throwing facts and arguments at that thing as we have been doing is about as effective as throwing cupfuls of water on a burning house. Hating it injures the hater, not the thing hated. Fearing them makes no sense; they have amply demonstrated that they are far too dumb to understand how anything works, let alone how to manage anything. Let’s just accept that they are there, and move on. With one additional technique.
Whenever we hear the Trumpster or one of his morons start talking about stolen elections or reinstatement or climate change denial or any of the thousand other things they misunderstand, we should respond with a hearty laugh. Note its existence, and lol.
It won’t destroy them, stupidity will never be eradicated any more than hurricanes or evil. But an individual hurricane, for example, cannot survive when it loses its source of heat — warm ocean water. Similarly, individual Trumpists are nourished by the anger and frustration of their detractors. Deprive them of that, and subject them to laughter, and many of them will shrivel like a vampire caught by the rising sun.
Problem is that just as Obama gave us Trump the first, Biden is giving us Trump again. Ya want Trump? Biden is how you get Trump.
Sounds like the Serenity Prayer repackaged.
Interesting observation. There’s a telling bit of resignation in that prayer.
” … individual Trumpists are nourished by the anger and frustration of their detractors.”
Yeah they are, and that’s why the “detractors” are about their get their asses handed to them, because they just can’t stop feeding the beast.
Napoleon: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
That’s the only Grand Strategy Trump has to employ at this point.
This is what Trump is up against.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY1eoY_MMco
I used to call my right wing brothers and sisters parrots, quite derisively and to their face, because that is exactly what they are. But they have nothing on these people.
Trump says it is all Fake News, and then his opponents repeatedly produce mountains of evidence to support his claim.
And at this point, I really think it serves them right.
I need to make Bingo cards for when I’m out in public – waiting in lines and so on – with all the pat phrases. Just heard a woman firmly state that there are 823 FEMA camps. But what do I get if I get a Bingo? A stiff drink might do it for some people, but I don’t drink much so it wouldn’t be consolong.
“823 FEMA camps.”
That one is still going around? Makes sense, after all there was an 8 year stretch when that’s all I heard, Obama with the help of his one million man Black Panther Army, was on the verge of rounding up whites and herding them all into FEMA concentration camps. Obama and the BPA just needed to finish building them.
Whether the intentions of the birth certificate-less Obama were to exterminate the white man was always left, unclear.
You know, I could politely handle all of them, what are now known as QAnon theories, even the craziest ones, like Hillary was selling atom bombs to the Russians (as if they needed more), or the Las Vegas massacre wasn’t a massacre at all but involved 20,000 paid actors pretending to get shot and killed, or even more implausible, grievously wounded, but the one I never would abide, was Donald Trump was a self-made man.
Practically clawed his way up and out of the New York City sewer system, he did, through sheer grit and guile, his destiny, to ascend to heights unimaginable.
Always told em, when the subject came up, as it always did in the lead up to 2016, “Personally, I always thought it better to keep any pathetic Daddy issues I might have, to myself.”
“What do you think?”
Oh, that’s what FEMA camps are for! I’ve been wondering having never heard the whole tale (told by an idiot signifying nothing).
Roads don’t get funded, how would secret death camps get funded? I’m betting that the infrastructure funds just voted on will either never materialize or evaporate on the way to the shovels so we will be lucky to see 5 potholes filled in.
” … how would secret death camps get funded?”
Good question! Damn I wish I would thought of that one, used it as my go-to counter-argument.
“Don’t worry my friends, you’ll be safe, Big Government is after all too inept to eradicate you.”