I Have Seen The Enemy - The Enemy Is Us

Have you ever noticed how many people there are that seem to think that whatever it is they believe in or what cause they've embraced it somehow gives them the right to push it into your face?

Of course you have. We all have and most of us get tired of it after awhile.

Activists of all stripes, religious fundamentalists of all religions, political zealots from all political parties, extreme atheists…whoever; they all share that one thing in common. They have a need to elevate the importance of their cause or their opinion  by getting in the faces of the rest of us.

We had to suffer through it all last fall with the precious Occupy protests that confused the right to freedom of assembly with vandalism, violent disruption of our communities and generally making a nuisance of themselves as they alternately pouted, pontificated and threatened. We had to suffer through endless accusations of police brutality and the crimes of Wall St. even as they trashed our cities and allowed crimes including sexual assault, child endangerment and even murder to take place in their camps.

Gay activists feel the need to hold gay pride parades to flaunt their sexuality in as outrageous a manner as possible which always confuses me. We have gays in our family and we don’t see them as being any different from the rest of us or having anything in common with the drag queens and showboats who prance half-naked down Main St. in a parade. I thought gays wanted to be accepted as a normal part of society. What in the hell is the purpose behind trying to prove you are different and apart from the society you are trying to encourage to accept you?

I can’t even begin to imagine a heterosexual pride parade. Would we all dress up in shorts, sandals, wear drug-store sunglasses and build floats with lawn furniture and barbeques on them? How trite, trivial and boring the whole thing has become.

Religious fundamentalists are constantly jumping in your face with pamphlets, flyers and offers of salvation or threats of damnation. The Internet is littered with endless tweets of biblical quotes, threats of perdition or why God hates everyone who worships him in a different way in a different religion. Sometimes I think God must wish he had a better fan club.

Some atheists feel the need to prove some misbegotten sense of  moral or intellectual superiority by getting in the face of believers with insulting and usually ill-informed and heavily prejudiced accusations about the fallacy of religion, how stupid people of faith are or the crimes of some within religion.

Some religious extremists are only happy if they’re blowing something up or killing someone.

Too many on the right are constantly looking for ways to provoke or rip off those on the left while too many on the left drag their soap boxes around so that they can preach and lecture and condemn at a moment’s notice while they meet together to plan how to spend even more of other people's money.

It makes you wonder sometimes if the only reason we were given our middle fingers was just so we could wave them at someone else.

photo: media. photobucket.com

Politics isn’t a blood sport, it’s an animal show; a carnival of the absurd filled with hypocrites, cynics and fools.

You can always tell when a candidate is starting to fall back in the polls. The attack ads intensify against his or her opponents regardless of the damage it does to the party or to democracy by distorting informed debate. The ads air constantly in an obscene orgy of money spent pushing self-serving hypocrisy in our faces in a desperate attempt to convince of us something, usually something negative about the 'other guy'.

Campaign promises become extreme and pander to various special interests and any concept of responsible governance is thrown out the window while real vision for the future is trivialized into bumper sticker slogans. Like everyone else in the great circus of hyperbole, winning has become everything. Truth, and respect for others have all become irrelevant.

It's enough to make your head explode!

I’m tired of the hypocrisy behind it and the insecurity that drives it. I’m tired of the lack of respect for the rights of others, our institutions, our laws, our communities, the lack of civility and common courtesy that fuels it. I’m tired of selfishness and a lack of values masquerading as righteousness and I’m tired of the self-indulgence of too many who feel they and their cause, their belief or their opinion are more important than those of anyone else.

They aren't. It is self-importance inflated to self-delusion. It's a delusion that somehow empowers too many to believe they have been blessed with a moral superiority that gives them the right to attack others for their opinions and beliefs.

There is a considerable amount of talk about democracy and protecting the rights of citizens from government but it is the citizens themselves who undermine the very principles of respect, consideration for the opinions and rights of others, consensus building, the rule of law and decision by majority agreement on which democracy is based. 

I’m tired of the ongoing tyranny of minority groups and causes.

Are these really the values we want to teach
our children?

Today it is no longer enough to simply hold and voice your opinion. Today, it has become the norm to try and destroy the opinions of others. To personalize every issue and demonize those who disagree with you.

Today it is no longer enough to earn the respect of others for your race, your religion, your cause, your sexual orientation or your political beliefs. Today it is the norm to flaunt them in rude, insulting and often vicious ways as if they are somehow superior to everything and everyone else. How arrogant and insecure can people get?

The stupidity of it all is that twenty years from now, nobody will care or remember most of the chanting, the arguing, the slogans, the hate messages, violence or the senseless rhetoric being thrown around today which pretty much defines their value.

Ask yourself this question.

How do you want to be treated by others? It seems to me that whatever the answer is to that question is a pretty good benchmark about how to treat them. It also seems to me that behaving like those you don’t like pretty much makes you the same as them. What does that mean about how you really see yourself?

It would be one thing if this behavior was relegated only to the lunatic fringe but it isn’t. There are a lot of nice people in this world but unfortunately, too many can too easily forget that as they pursue some belief, some issue or some cause. 

We’re all in this life together but we’re only going to start realizing and benefiting from the strength of that when we stop behaving like self-righteous fools and start remembering that there are very few of us who have a monopoly on truth or righteousness. 

Each of us has a limited amount of time on this planet and it’s time to ask ourselves how we each want to be remembered after we’re gone. 

Do we want to be remembered by those who knew us as someone who contributed to life, was respected and who  made life a little better or would we prefer to be dismissed as just another crackpot who was a pain in the butt and who will be quickly and thankfully forgotten? 

We each get to make that choice but quite honestly, I can’t think of anything sadder than leaving this life and having nobody care because we left nothing of value behind us and contributed nothing but anger when we had the opportunity to contribute so much more.

There is an old adage that says the thing we fear in others is the thing we most fear in ourselves. Many of us would do well to remember that in future.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others