Honey take the high road
Well then, where were we? Right-o, let's foget that little part where my ego needed stroking. Christ, I got no excuses, 'cept the one I keep from making. Instead of acting like the man-child I am, I should just forge ahead and do the things I want to. No one likes the rich man complaining that he can't have what he really wants. Fortunately we are fat people.
What is lacking today is real courage. We substitute the idiocy of physical endangerment (ie - Croc Hunter, Jackass) for what is courageous. But being fearless is not the same as facing up to fear. No real courage requires an understanding of sacrifices made subjectively - which is best understood in contrast to the cowardice today of sending other people into harm's way.
Take the war for instance - courage would not be its defining charecteristic. When the President and Congress sent out to fight a war for them, against the allegation of the threat they posed, it was an easy poltical vote. Very few congressional representatives had the courage to vote using their best judgement (about how wars are fought), but they did. Several seasoned veterans (of congress and the military) effectively ended their political careers that day, but they didn't back down in fear.
As long as sacrifice of anything other than our freedoms has yet to be made by the American people, we never really will be courageous because we don't stand to lose a thing. Indeed fear has an effective means of detering the kind of meaningful dissent we still need to get our friends and family back home from service. We're cowards in the face of it all, because we stand to lose a freedom when we exercize one (namely, of speech). What can I say except coersion works, and the result is an actual effort to conform to evade notice and thereby avoid such losses.
So when I stand here pleading for instant gratification, you can be sure that I am a coward. These are hollow words, sent in a shot in the dark over the boundless frontier of endless misinformation we call the internet. I stand to lose nothing by saying it here, or at least that's the promise the annonymity offers me. I get to keep my plunders and spoil myself further in spite of dissent. Something will be done about that.
What is lacking today is real courage. We substitute the idiocy of physical endangerment (ie - Croc Hunter, Jackass) for what is courageous. But being fearless is not the same as facing up to fear. No real courage requires an understanding of sacrifices made subjectively - which is best understood in contrast to the cowardice today of sending other people into harm's way.
Take the war for instance - courage would not be its defining charecteristic. When the President and Congress sent out to fight a war for them, against the allegation of the threat they posed, it was an easy poltical vote. Very few congressional representatives had the courage to vote using their best judgement (about how wars are fought), but they did. Several seasoned veterans (of congress and the military) effectively ended their political careers that day, but they didn't back down in fear.
As long as sacrifice of anything other than our freedoms has yet to be made by the American people, we never really will be courageous because we don't stand to lose a thing. Indeed fear has an effective means of detering the kind of meaningful dissent we still need to get our friends and family back home from service. We're cowards in the face of it all, because we stand to lose a freedom when we exercize one (namely, of speech). What can I say except coersion works, and the result is an actual effort to conform to evade notice and thereby avoid such losses.
So when I stand here pleading for instant gratification, you can be sure that I am a coward. These are hollow words, sent in a shot in the dark over the boundless frontier of endless misinformation we call the internet. I stand to lose nothing by saying it here, or at least that's the promise the annonymity offers me. I get to keep my plunders and spoil myself further in spite of dissent. Something will be done about that.