Persons who defend whichever contrived benefits of their social media usage implore the same language as do junkies arguing they haven’t a problem. It’s the closest thing to a fully public restroom since the old Roman vomitoria. You can avoid it or you can avoid responsibility for it but you cannot swing both. I talk a lot of shit for someone who’s well-read and well-traveled and who endured without help in their lifetime every hardship down to being woken on a homeless morning in wintery New England by a cop pissing on him. Every political party, every doctrine of theological faith and every corporate branding iron finds acceptance among those eager to get sold on justifications not to help certain others. Take the abortion debate. No side pursues any effort toward removing living fetuses safer and cheaper than dead ones, and with no lingering strings attached legally or financially, as both sides prefer blood on their own hands than giving up usurping the value of life for others. Over half a million words in essays at my site and not once do I make the argument that anyone anywhere deserves more life and liberty than you. But I do argue nobody deserves less. And yet no church or state or industry can find enrichment without selling exceptions to that.
The virtues of old didn’t rationalize some life being less important than others, for the same reason they didn’t rationalize lethal force administered under any circumstances by anyone, anywhere. But the vices did, and continue to do after dancing on the unmarked grave of virtue. The people and places and things you trust the most in this world have no power whatsoever over my life, only my death. But how precisely have I wronged you so, to justify my invariable end by those hands you elect to favor more than your very own?
And each and every day that each and every gun-owner is not being the action hero of their wet-dreams, killing the boogeymen of their nightmares, actual, flesh and blood innocents are being killed by gunfire. Their screams are a certification that gun-owners give more value to their own fears than to the well-being of fellow Americans, fears of the possibilities that others may exist out there who are as crazy and ignorant and self-possessed as themselves. When you have allowed yourselves to be made so willing and able to hate so many of your countrymen as leeches or threats or just plain inconsequential, and so willing and able to see so many of your countrymen die needlessly, what the fuck do you think patriotism means? Patriotism is the absence of consideration for non-symbols. If self-defense is only ever possible by way of lethal force, you have given credence to leaders unable or unwilling to see beyond their very own biases, desires, fetishes, quirks, whims and wishes and fears. The lone thing across western civilization privately and collectively held as more offensive than ageism, racism, sexism, homophobia, reverse discrimination, etc, is the inability or unwillingness to have one’s fantasy catered. Picking up trash from my sister’s street does a lot more for the world than does being an audience for anyone’s ego-waxing. Yet that is what people kill over.
Gun-owners not using their collectibles daily to fight tyranny or save lives are no better than cosplayers. Regardless of perceived greatness in its appeal, indulging fantasy is the avoidance of problem-solving. Artists and politicos see themselves as too good to scrub toilets. Celebrities, captains of industry and leaders of men faithfully and repetitiously have their gall mistaken for bravery. But bravery comes from surviving consequence despite lacking resources or opportunities, or from sacrificing one’s own for those who have less.
Bravery is never the aggregation of comforts, it’s in the going without.
Every other country allows intimidation by something like 90% of all the world’s military bases belonging to Uncle Sam, when Americans are nothing but daydreaming cowards who’ve convinced themselves the slightest discomfort in life is a plot against their own well-being. Who in whichever high society all esteem after earnestly gives what to warrant being center of attention for people suffering their own thoughts and feelings? Icon wannabees are codependent tenderfoots to seriously believe their happiness deserves any authority over livelihoods. Nobody’s esteem is more important than the life of anybody anywhere, yet every single American has no issue whatsoever with believing they themselves deserve streaming pablum of for-profit artificial cultures more than others deserve to be fed or housed. In any context, it is the villain and never the hero leaving it for others to do the hard work either for their own survival or for the survival of anyone else, but every yokel nincompoop believes emphatically that they are the heroes of their own life story. You are not really independent or self-dependent if you can only function when and where you are wanted or needed, and you’re not a real nihilist unless you can thrive while being unwanted and unneeded.
Everything that needs shelter or sustenance should have it, unless it’s to be a commercial for a self-interest or self-enrichment. Sacrificing for the dreams or fantasies of others is not synonymous with sacrificing for their survival. Your favorite person, place or thing being indulged or entertained is never really the same thing as it performing a service. One may lead to the other but by and large are they separate experiences no matter arguments to the contrary from market analysts, divorce attorneys, tech moguls, social media experts, self-help gurus, politicians, religious leaders, artists and entertainers. Only in America do heroes and self-made persons require others to sacrifice, time and energy, attentions and monies. Why should a person, place or thing with more resource and opportunity than you ever need your support for its survival? It doesn’t. Americans are dumber than rocks.
No idea whether the concept of Proximate cause came from digesting the Nuremberg principles or if the Nuremberg principles were born from the notion of Proximate cause, or if they developed separately, but in terms of being contributing members to society their relationship evades anyone with concerns no greater than self-interest. What if the problematic root which nobody will ever in a zillion years address is not in determining which evil is the biggest evil in the world, but the casual fact of egos pardoned be they our own, or those belonging to persons we wish to befriend, to fuck or to vicariously be?
Maybe, there’s nonstop upheaval the world round because everyone applies every effort toward pushing and pulling each other about than to holding them steady. Mind over matter birthing earthquakes.