on country singer Larry Gatlin's short rant posted to Facebook---
the knee jerk (or redneck depending on where you call home) reaction that Gatlin spouts here is understandable…only a fool wouldn’t be angry about what’s happened and what’s happening
that said, here’s my two cents right backatcha, there, Larry..and for that matter, the voices who whose guns are locked and loaded but whose brains still have the safety on---
of COURSE, the French president declared war on ISIS and, of course, ISIS’ attack is an act of war…a ten year old knows an act of war when they see one AND what ELSE can the president of the country just violently attacked say, but WE declare war
when it comes to the instant yammering in print and online of those who want to turn off watching either the Kardashians or Duck Dynasty long enough to start dropping bombs anywhere and everywhere?... talk is cheap and it’s easy to know exactly what to do when you’re not the person responsible for pushing the buttons or flipping the switches and the LAST thing ANY of us need is anybody else, OR ANYBODY, for that matter, using whatever public bullhorn they have available to them to rant and rave for no better purpose than to tell us what WE ALREADY KNOW….including yours truly…how about some SPECIFIC and PRACTICAL suggestions for taking ACTION? How about put your own obvious “right wing” bias on pause for a while and be a force to rally us ALL together to fight and destroy the real enemy?..... and ENOUGH already with the flag waving just to make yourself feel better? EVERYBODY with a reasonable bone in their body knows WHAT is happening and doesn’t need a once upon a time Nashville/Las Vegas lounge singer, among all the other spouters, to tell us all, AGAIN, what we already know….
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and that goes for those who were screaming and yelling and posting about their hatred for Obama while the dead bodies in Paris were still warm…guess what? he’s NOT the enemy…Bush is NOT the enemy…Hillary is NOT the enemy…Trump is NOT the enemy…..Cruz is NOT the enemy….the enemy is ISIS….lemme spell it out for you I S I S
while we’re at it, ENOUGH with the useless, petty and moronic name calling like “those idiots on the left”….there’s plenty of idiots to go round comment posted on Gatlin’s video---“tell em bout it ---cant wait till isis and islam meets redneck and hillbilly resistance”
plenty of idiots on both sides and, guess what, Larry? there are plenty of people who might correctly be labeled as “left” who are as angry and determined as you are….but, here’s a little something for you consideration…….you want to declare war on ISIS?…knock yourself out…I’ll stand right beside you and I’ll sign your damn petition and I’ll go door to door to get others involved….oh…wait….just one thing, one little pesky detail….WHO exactly are we declaring war on? Where are they? What uniforms should we be looking for? Which easily recognized symbol should we look for on their uniforms and helmets and flags and tanks? A big red sun like the Japanese used in World War II? a huge swastika that immediately alerts us that the Nazis are here?....oh…wait…..this ISIS bunch…they don’t play that way….they don’t play fair at all…they’re gutless and cowardly and pure evil…and they strike from the shadows and either run back into those shadows or blow themselves up because in their sick, black, evil brains allah akbar, baby….
bottom line...I’ve been saying for a while now that our arrogance was a danger….appreciate your checkin’ in and alerting us to the danger, there, Larry….now how about posting a video with something we can use?
on former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton's opinion that the war on ISIS has to be a "new" kind of war---
all of those lips flapping about bombing ISIS out of existence, including the lips of that real estate mogul who’s got a frighteningly real shot at the GOP nomination for president who said, outloud, he would bomb the SHIT out of ISIS…all of those lips know from NOTHING about how this kind of enemy operates…they’re not gathered in a town like Hiroshima where we can conveniently drop some Made in the USA nukes on em…they're animals…predators…rodents…..who scurry and hide and lurk and scoot and….yes, there is a way to destroy them, we’re America, man…this country has always figured out how to win in the end…but this mindless, Ted Nugent fan club chant that opening up a can of good old fashioned US of A whup ass on em is gonna save the day is as useless as it is foolish…
if the military had had its way in 1962, you very likely wouldn’t be listening to me right now because it’s very likely the world would have gotten blown up in a nuclear war…the GENERALS insisted that the only way to deal with the Russians and the missiles in Cuba was to “open up a good old fashioned can of US of A whup ass on em”….a cooler head, John Kennedy’s head, prevailed and strength and determination of a more sensible kind backed the Russians down….no small irony that that cooler head, by the way, got blown off just a year later, but let’s don’t do wing nut conspiracy theory tonight, we’ve got enough on our radar…
the point is this: I agree that we need to go to war…but we need to go to war in a way that will win it…decisively, effectively and as quickly as humanly possible….and I agree with John Bolton….the next president will be facing that evil from moment one of day one of their term….we need a president who understands the difference between smart, cool, quick, effective and practical ways to destroy an evil….and just making a lot of useless noise flapping a flag and opening up a can…
on Ronda Rousey inadvertently teaching us why we need to change our way of thinking
Ronda Rousey---until last night she was the undefeated UFC bantamweight champion…her fights were almost the topic of comic monologues because they consisted of her coming out and with six or eight punches and couple of kicks, dropping her opponents, as the old saying goes, like a bag of wet cement
last night, in Melbourne, a fighter named Holly Holm took just one round and 59 seconds to drop Ronda Rousey like a bag of wet cement….
UFC fans, Ronda Rousey fans, are in shock today….how could that have HAPPENED? and maybe, at this moment, you’re thinking WOW SEP did you just totally whirl around and change subjects just now or what? we were talking about Paris and ISIS and terrorism…well, kids, here a thing…we still are….
If you’ve followed Ronda Rousey at all in the last few months, you’ve seen not only an American success story, but the perfect metaphor for America in the age of terrorism….ability, skill, spunk, moxy, talent, if you use talent as a word to describe somebody whose deal is literally kicking the crap out of somebody else…and a record of wins and losses that, up until last night, made her seem unbeatable….because she was unbeaten…but, almost inevitably, with a feeling of invincibility comes a confidence that, if not carefully controlled, becomes arrogance….the arrogance of believing that nobody can beat us…oops, sorry, beat her….the kind of arrogance that made her feel unbeatable, because she was unbeaten---until last night….last night Ronda Rousey got her ass kicked and was dropped like a bag of wet cement
in the year 2015, war, as it has been fought for centuries, doesn’t exist anymore….the kind of war necessary to triumph over evil requires a new way of thinking, a new way of strategizing…it’s not even CLOSE to good enough to just be the good guys anymore…because we’re not up against bad guys…we’re up against cold, calculating, methodical, certainly sociopathic and most definitely psychotic forces of destruction---and while it’s all very patriotic to grab a flag to wave with one hand and a rifle with the other hand and tell those bastards “come on, ya’ll, bring it, we’re the US of A”, that approach, that attitude, that mindset is not only arrogant, it’s simply not all that bright…
we’re not facing the Japanese gun to gun, ship to ship, plane to plane…we’re not facing the Nazis, gun to gun ship to ship, plane to plane…we’re facing the Borg….who don’t care if they live or die…all that matters is the conquest…think for a second how the Second World War might have ended if EVERY SINGLE JAPANESE had been a kami kaze…the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been nothing more to them than another day on the march to conquest….
the black souls that make up ISIS don’t care if they live or die…all that matters is the conquest….and it’s not only arrogant for us to believe that we can end that conquest with that good old fashioned can of American whup ass that we talked about in the last segment…it’s foolish…
Ronda Rousey went into that cage last night with, at least, a little of that inevitable arrogance that comes from feeling unbeatable---and she got her ass kicked…
France got their ass kicked this week…we got OUR ass kicked in September 14 years ago…the definition of insanity, Einstein told us, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time…it’s insanity to think we can stop evil with nothing more than anger, pride, confidence and, yes, arrogance….
old saying…desperate times call for desperate measures
updated saying….new times call for new measures
Larry Gatlin said it best in his little video rant….he just didn’t know that he was saying it for a different reason…wake up, America---
on the myth that is the "war" on Christmas
John Lennon once got in the soup for saying that the Beatles were more popular than Christ….forget that, technically, he was correct in the complete context of what he was asked and what was happening in those days but there was something else Lennon said about Christ I’ve always appreciated and no more so than THESE days with all the hostility and bitching and preaching going on about, and from, some who insist on calling themselves Christians….John said “actually, Jesus was cool…it was the disciples who effed everything up”….now fast forward fifty years, here we are in 2015 , leave the word Jesus in that sentence and just substitute “petty, self- righteous, holier than thou bigots who think there’s religious persecution to be found on a paper coffee cup” for the word disciples and John Lennon’s words ring as true today as ever…..
my understanding of Christianity as a concept, if not a belief system is that it is about living a life in the spirit of Jesus’s teachings, setting an example for others of a life lived along the lines of caring and compassion and concern for others and each other and doing one’s best to find the humanity, the loving, caring, compassionate humanity in, if not every situation in every day, than in as many situations as humanly possible.
I’ve never seen or read anything of Jesus’ teachings that would lead me, for a second, to believe that Christianity was EVER meant to be the spiritual equivalent of a posh country club filled with snobs and bigots and pompous self-righteousness…looking down, if even bothering to look at all, on those who weren’t using every minute of their lives to work as hard as they can to be a MEMBER of the club….never occurred to me, for a nano-second, that Jesus, were He here to guide and advise, would want the ANNITY named after Him to be a fraternity or sorority that had no use for anyone who doesn’t know the secret handshake and who seem, by their words, attitudes and actions, to pity the poor fools who don’t have a chance of happiness in this life, or the next, if they’re not part of the membership roster….
and worst of all, or at least, to my way of thinking, worst of all at THIS time of the year? the snobbery and the bigotry and the self-righteousness and the holier than thou-ness that should, if not disappear, take a break and call a cease fire during a few weeks of peace on Earth and good will towards men, actually gets WORSE….and the hair trigger of hostility gets pulled by something as simple…and silly….as the decision to print up paper coffee cups that DON’T have snowflakes, pine trees and reindeer on them….and, by the way, snowflakes, pine trees and reindeer are NOWHERE TO BE FOUND in the manual on how to be a good Christian----
wow…war on Christmas? I don’t buy it….what I DO think possible is that a lot of people are beginning to realize that the America we live in is the America that I learned about in school when I was a kid…a melting pot of cultures and races and ancestries and, yes, religious beliefs….Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, yes, Muslim and, yes, Christian…and, while we’re at it, agnostic, atheist and a category the numbers crunchers refer to as “nothing in particular”…..people sometimes argue that I shouldn’t add those folks into the count, but, I think that having no specific earthly religion can reasonably be defined as having a religion of a more spiritual nature---as for me
I love Christmas…I think Christmas and all the trappings of Christmas that go along with it are cool and fun and, for me, spiritually refreshing….from the tree to the lights to the ornaments to the nativity scenes to the music, both secular and non, to the hustle and bustle, to the childlike joy of waiting for a fat guy in a red suit to come zipping into town with some serious loot to the deeper spiritual joy of observing the birth of a child who lived a life of caring and compassion and concern for others and, if you believe it, sacrificed that life so that others could be freed from the hopelessness of our human weaknesses and failings….
all of that said, I’m delighted to see paper cups decorated with snowflakes and pine trees and reindeer…but even if the coffee cup is only solid red with some green on it, I’m good…because nobody’s going to take my Christmas away from me by changing the print on some cups…or not putting a tree up in a mall…or keeping the nativity scene in that box in the garage that may, or may not, have the words Christmas written in Sharpie on it…the silliness of all this pettiness is that “war on Christmas” conjures up images of…well…war….and in a war, there is traditionally, a winner and a loser….and in a war, traditionally, one side remains and one side is destroyed….boycott whoever you like if it makes you feel like something that silly makes any difference….me? I’m good…you see…I know something a lot of people apparently don’t know…or have forgotten since they were kids….you can’t destroy Christmas because it’s indestructible….it’s not a place or a thing…and it can’t be gotten to….because it’s inside you…if you want it…it’s inside ME….and sometimes, even in months other than November and December---
-- war on Christmas?.....war is over…if you want it—
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