About Me
- Name: Dean
- Location: New Paltz, NY
About me? Why I'm a dashing swashbuckler, a loyal Knight of the Armchair, cast in the Errol Flynn vein ... vain ... whatever.
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Friday, November 12, 2004
Things I'm Learning Since the Election
That there are many people who are being 'informed' by some very questionable sources and who are holding on to some equally questionable ideas.
A few examples. While visiting a friend in Vermont, I naturally flipped on the hotel T.V. (I killed my T.V. back in 2000....believe I mentioned that in the post previous to this one.) and came across a televangelist. He's a very distinctive fella with numerous obvious verbal and facial twitches and a passion for drawing while he preaches.
Anyway, he conveyed a story about 3 guys in a war prison forced to do hard labor...a regular guy, a christian, and a queer. (I'm using his word here...just so's you get the sense of his story.) Well naturally the regular guy griped all the time, the christian sang hymns and worked hard, and the queer was lazy. One day the regular guy had had enough of the queer (being so lazy) and was going to kill him, but the christian stopped him, saying: "You don't want to damn your everlasting soul to eternal hell do you?" He followed this up, not with a discussion about word choices or why all humans have value (in the eyes of God), or anything else along those lines. His follow-up was about how accepting Christ as your savior made you into one heck of a happy, hard-working guy...like the christian.
Now this strikes me as wrong on so many levels, but obviously it doesn't come across that way to numerous other people. Not to the guy who was saying it and not to the people willing to tune into him every Sunday. I remind myself that these people vote and probably do so on 'issues of morality'.
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A second moment of instruction came from an encounter I had with a fellow co-worker whom I know to be technically/scientifically intelligent, relatively conservative (guns, smaller gov't, etc.), and highly opinionated. He said he didn't consider the abortion issue when voting this time, even though he feels strongly that women should have all rights over the control of their own bodies (liberal-think), because - now get this - he's sure that "the issue of abortion and Women's Rights over their bodies has already been decided. It's a done deal. They can't go back and change that."
What? Not only 'what', but 'WTF'!
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Paying attention to what other people are saying is, well, frightening. Reminds me of why I stopped listening in the first place. Carumba!
A few examples. While visiting a friend in Vermont, I naturally flipped on the hotel T.V. (I killed my T.V. back in 2000....believe I mentioned that in the post previous to this one.) and came across a televangelist. He's a very distinctive fella with numerous obvious verbal and facial twitches and a passion for drawing while he preaches.
Anyway, he conveyed a story about 3 guys in a war prison forced to do hard labor...a regular guy, a christian, and a queer. (I'm using his word here...just so's you get the sense of his story.) Well naturally the regular guy griped all the time, the christian sang hymns and worked hard, and the queer was lazy. One day the regular guy had had enough of the queer (being so lazy) and was going to kill him, but the christian stopped him, saying: "You don't want to damn your everlasting soul to eternal hell do you?" He followed this up, not with a discussion about word choices or why all humans have value (in the eyes of God), or anything else along those lines. His follow-up was about how accepting Christ as your savior made you into one heck of a happy, hard-working guy...like the christian.
Now this strikes me as wrong on so many levels, but obviously it doesn't come across that way to numerous other people. Not to the guy who was saying it and not to the people willing to tune into him every Sunday. I remind myself that these people vote and probably do so on 'issues of morality'.
-------------------
A second moment of instruction came from an encounter I had with a fellow co-worker whom I know to be technically/scientifically intelligent, relatively conservative (guns, smaller gov't, etc.), and highly opinionated. He said he didn't consider the abortion issue when voting this time, even though he feels strongly that women should have all rights over the control of their own bodies (liberal-think), because - now get this - he's sure that "the issue of abortion and Women's Rights over their bodies has already been decided. It's a done deal. They can't go back and change that."
What? Not only 'what', but 'WTF'!
--------------------
Paying attention to what other people are saying is, well, frightening. Reminds me of why I stopped listening in the first place. Carumba!
