What’s Wrong With This Picture?

 

Two days ago, I read and viewed a WordPress essay where the blogger had been unduly critical in evaluating some accompanying self-portrait photographs.

True, I could’ve used the blog comment section to express how this wonderfully talented writer’s excessively harsh critique had profoundly saddened me… BUT…

1. My reaction could’ve easily been dismissed (e.g., “Oh, he’s just being nice”).
2. Within this massive social network, comments do tend to get buried even faster than the blogs, themselves.
3. I felt that such commentary, in my own blog venue, might be better received.
4. Because nearly everyone (inclusive of yours truly), at some point in our lives, has been hypercritical re our own physical appearance, I deemed this matter worthy of presentation to the entire WordPress blogging community… i.e., in hopes that we might get a long overdue discussion going?

Working towards that goal…

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with us trying to look our best, we must never succumb to embracing the entertainment industry’s narrow parameters of beauty. We must never accept how their odious, meat market mindset negatively impacts humankind… targets and objectifies females far more frequently than males.

Merriam-Webster defines “meat market” thusly…

A depersonalizing environment in which people are treated as sexual or economic resources.

Oh, btw, the first known use of this expression dates back to 1896, which just goes to show us how warped and deeply entrenched this devaluation of human beings is. And to be sure, here, this dates back to the dawn of humankind!

I’d love to believe that we could blame this sorry state of affairs on our genes… i.e., the forces of nature have programmed us into being beauty biased just to ensure that only “attractive”, “desirable” traits will breed true… BUT…

How could such mindlessness ever take into account how pretty faces do not automatically ensure pretty minds lurk directly behind them? To be sure, here, possessing / being possessed by “Hollywood good looks” is rarely, if ever, a prerequisite for thinking attractive, desirable thoughts.

Furthermore, do not ugly thoughts also breed true?

Hell… for that answer, we need look no further than the entertainment industry’s corporate big shots who’ve been needlessly instilling inferiority complexes amongst the masses.

AND THAT’S NOT ENTERTAINMENT!!!

I welcome your comments.

A Clear Conscience and Clarity of Thought

 

Granted, humans cannot be expected to remember everything. If we ever attempted to take on such a daunting task, each day would soon become so chaotic we’d likely drive ourselves nuts.

To help maintain our psychological equilibrium, we assess the degree of importance of events, faces, facts and figures, etc.… compartmentalizing this data as either short or long-term memories. We do tend to dismiss low ranked items… in other words… eventually forget the inconsequential stuff. But, that does beg the following Qs…

Would not folks who… oh… say… hire on as high ranking presidential campaign workers OR staff high profile, presidential cabinet positions all become so impressed with… maybe even geeked about… their assignments that they’d automatically categorize more things as important? Ergo, transform more of what they’ve been experiencing and whom they’ve been meeting into long-term memories?

Should not such individuals… oh… say… when questioned during congressional inquests into suspected wrongdoing, become fountains of knowledge? In other words… are they not uniquely qualified / intrinsically better prepared to supply answers to nearly all of the tough questions? And more to the point… is it not their patriotic duty to come clean?

Yet, more often than not, we hear such individuals hemming and hawing… practically mincing words down to their atomic structure… qualifying and prefacing nearly every last damned statement they utter with, “To the best of my recollection…” And then, there’s always that inquest thwarting, stonewalling, robotically deadpanned, “I don’t remember.”

True such amnesia can be legitimate… but what if it’s not? We then wind up witnessing selective amnesia… a.k.a. the convenient feigning of forgetfulness…the ploys to cover up the guilty party’s incompetence, malfeasance and/or corruption.

Let’s not fall victim to, yet, another form of amnesia. We must NEVER forget that the duties many of these federal employees / appointees are responsible for carrying out oft involve national security issues.

Inquisitors must never let slide anyone’s claims of amnesia. Why not? The following two scenarios will elaborate…

Scenario 1: If the forgetfulness is legitimate (and not an isolated occurrence), that means someone might be seriously ill and in need of prompt medical evaluation. Towards them, we can remain compassionate BUT we must also remain vigilant… understand that unless and until meds/therapy can expeditiously “lift the fog” as it were, we cannot allow anyone to remain in a position where being anything less than fully alert could jeopardize our national security.

Scenario 2: If the forgetfulness is feigned (and a chronic behavior), such individuals are in need of prompt legal attention. Their transgressions need to be evaluated in a court of law. Prison sentences should await all who are convicted. If not? Well, then we are allowing such individuals to remain in positions where their corruption could jeopardize our national security.

In our post 9/11 world, national security is what it’s all about. From each of our elected and appointed government entities we cannot and must not settle for anything less than a clear conscience and clarity of thought. Those qualities go hand in hand with transparency in government, too. For anyone unable to meet or exceed (what should be) our high expectations, they should either resign or be fired.

 

In Response To Terrorist Acts… Past, Present & Future…

 

 

So, you kill in your god’s name, so you say?

Your Holey War¹ is to make “sinners” “pay”?

“Thou Shalt NOT Kill” is NO spin,

When YOU kill folks, that’s YOUR sin,

How will YOU pay, on God’s real Judgment Day?

 

If the voice in your head orders killing,

Commands chaos and carnage, blood spilling,

No one else is to blame,

Except you, fool, by name,

Don’t you dare try to give “God” top billing!

 

Re the god, who you claim to endorse?

Be He Christian, Jew, Muslim or Norse,

Would one gentle and shrewd,

Seek your help, cruel and crude?

NOPE, that’s not work He’d ever outsource!

 

To dive off the deep end is to sink,

Try to muster sound brain cells to think,

Instead fight the insanity,

End your war on humanity,

Seek out peace of mind, hire a shrink!

 

 

¹ No… I didn’t misspell “Holy”.

 

Not Under FBI Investigation? (99 Word Blog #085)

 

While it’d be ill-advised to ever deem credible claims uttered, written and Tweeted by #45… for discussion purposes ONLY… let’s say paragraph two, of the letter where he fired FBI Director James Comey, wasn’t a flat-out lie… namely… Comey had actually thrice assured #45 he wasn’t under investigation.

#45 fails to realize that ANY such “assurances” coming from ANY FBI agent at ANY time can ONLY mean one thing…

THE EXACT OPPOSITE IS TRUE!!!

A common cop tactic is to pretend to be his prime suspect’s pal… lull him into letting down his guard so he’ll further incriminate himself.

Lessons From Kent State University

For anyone old enough to have lived through the turbulent 1960s and 70s, the Kent State massacre was one of American History’s darkest, most tragic, “where were you when” moments.

For me, that “when” was early evening on this very day, May 4, 1970. That’s when, as a 16-year-young high school sophomore, I first became aware of how 29 American soldiers (members of the Ohio National Guard) had fired off approximately 67 rounds in the short span of one minute (or less) to kill 4 American students and wound 9 others.

That death toll and casualty list had been the end result of a demonstration by Kent State University college students pissed off by President Richard M. Nixon’s escalation of the Vietnam War… i.e., his invasion of neighboring Cambodia. It was during their antiwar rally that things got ugly… protestors wound up setting fire to the campus’ ROTC building and repeatedly pegging rocks at the armed troops.

Basically, what we had here was the troops overreacting… using bullets to defend themselves against stones and assessing a higher value to that charred real estate than to their own compatriots’ precious lives.

It’d be hard not to conclude that the very presence of these troops had needlessly escalated an already overly tense situation. Even Nixon’s own President’s Commission on Campus Unrest concluded (and I concur MOST EMPHATICALLY)…

“The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.”

Students suspected of arson and assault could’ve later been arrested, charged, arraigned, tried and, if found guilty, been duly punished. In a situation such as this, troops are NEVER supposed to act in the roles of judges, juries and executioners!

Also worthy of mention is that both warring factions on this Kent State campus battlefield could’ve benefited immensely from the following wisdom.

William Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” character, Fallstaff, said…

“The better part of Valour, is Discretion; in the which better part, I haue saued my life” (oft paraphrased… “Discretion is the better part of valor.”)

Sun Tzu, author of “Art of War” opined along similar lines, thusly…

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” and “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”

The sagaciousness of some superb song composers also comes to mind…

Check out a couple of lyrical couplets…

From Stephen Stills’ “For What It’s Worth”…

“There’s battle lines being drawn,

Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”

From John Lennon/Paul McCartney’s “Revolution”…

“But when you talk about destruction…

Don’t you know that you can count me out.”

Were not all of the above wordsmiths emphasizing the need for orderly conduct by all parties involved in any dispute… were they not all on the same page as the U.S. Constitution’s 1st Amendment (note the qualifying word, “peaceably”)?

“Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Fast forwarding to our troubled present-day world… political and social unrest has only grown worse… especially since the installation of #45.

Now, more than ever, all protest movements must always be conducted peaceably. Nobody should ever give that Oval Office entity even the slightest excuse to overreact… to roll out the tanks… to order Americans troops to open fire on American citizens in a way that is equal to… or exceeds the actions taken by the Ohio National Guard in Kent State…

On this very day… May 4, 1970.

 

The Not Ready For Primetime (or any other time) Régime

The good news… TV ratings for NBC’s Saturday Night Live are up… way up. Nielson reports 10.6 million have been tuning in regularly… that figure representing an increase in viewership of 2 million.

The bad(?) news… SNL primarily owes its success to Alec Baldwin lampooning a downright failure of a man.

The worst(?) part… the butt of their jokes is paying far more attention to what’s happening within SNL’s studio 8H in Manhattan than… well… pretty much whatever else is going on in the rest of the world.

Is that totally bad?

No. Each and every time #45 is overreacting / going berserk on Twitter he’s also frittering away his four year term… meaning less time for him to FUBAR our global economy, ecology and society.

Of course, what those key problem areas do need the most is the positive, proactive attention and actions of a real leader… an empathetic, ethical, focused, genuine intellect… such as former President Barack Obama.

Of course, #45 is not such a man. NOPE, he could never live up to those presidential qualifications. Ergo, it’s just as well that he’s got his eyes glued to his TV every Saturday at 11:30 p.m.… is obsessing over and bouncing off the walls whenever SNL’s brilliant political satirists effortlessly get under his thin skin.

Yet, one cannot help but wonder…

If SNL elected to never lampoon #45 / his régime again, would that upset him even more?

Tear Down (Your Plans For) This Wall!

 

In keeping with his campaign promise, #45 is now chomping at the bit to break ground on his $8 – $12 BILLION wall along the southern U.S. border… and to (somehow) force Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to pony up.

Well, as we already know, there’ll be no such payment… which all leaves #45 in a bit of a quandary. Or does it?

Has he forgotten about the furniture within his Manhattan palace? And, no, I’m not suggesting he sell it off.

All he need do is check between the living room sofa cushions for those BILLION$… what he’d consider chump change. It’s bound to be hiding there.

Of course he had better dig a bit deeper because it’d appear that his guesstimate has been way too conservative. The more realistic price tag attached to his wall could easily fall within the 40 BILLION BUCK range… so says one expert, Konstantin Kakaes.

Another predicament? Maybe not.

Obviously, it’d be a YUGE [sic] stretch, but, it’d behoove #45 to behave a bit more like #35 (a.k.a. John F. Kennedy)… to deep six this wall… to understand that waging and winning a war on poverty is a far more productive, permanent project… to accept that this would all take more time and patience… but it’d be well worth it!

The best part of this… it’d require finding “only” 30 of those 40 billion bucks and then utilizing it to feed ALL 870 Million of our world’s undernourished and starving people (btw, be sure to read Leen Abdallah’s Blog).

No fooling… for $30 billion no one would go hungry for ONE FULL YEAR!

Yes, at first #45 would need to assume the role of Santa Claus. But, as his “elves” would be delivering this humanitarian aid, they’d also be building the foundation of good will, worldwide. What’s imperative here is the fed recipients would need to be fully aware that the U.S. is their benefactor. After all, it goes against basic human nature, to “bite” the hand that feeds you.

At that point it’d be time for the U.S. to build on two astute and timeless sayings…

“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

-and-

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

In subsequent years, #45’s helpers, if doing their jobs properly, would be instilling a strong work ethic within their “fisher folk” along with the accompanying feelings of satisfaction one generally gets upon reflecting upon a job well done at the end of each workday.

Eventually, criminal activity… and in some instances even terrorist activity… would be on the wane… if for no other reason than honest work gives everyone purpose… prevents idle hands and minds. Not to make light of this but folks would be yawning too damned much to even listen to devilish recruiters (e.g. ISIS).

Yes, stronger, happier humans make for stronger happier homelands.

Ultimately, be it at America’s coastlines or borders, the folks attempting to enter would be friendly tourists… not illegally entering foes. For those who chose to emigrate, with nothing to fear about them, Americans could always welcome them with open hearts, minds and arms.

However, for potential émigrés, it’d would likely be a tough choice to make since their homelands would be just as attractive as America… maybe even more so… after all…

“There’s no place like home.”