As God is my Witness I Thought Turkeys Could Fly.
Willful ignorance. This is a problem that just won’t go away. You don’t want to think, maybe because you think that sitting down and just thinking is lazy? What about wasting your time and energy, wasting the one life you have to live through running in circles,spinning your wheels, not taking the time to see where you are and what you are doing.
Take Rolling Stone magazine. RS used to be printed on news sheet, then it became a glossy tabloid and now RS is a standard size glossy magazine with myriad commemorative and collector issues printed each month. Rolling Stone was a counter culture newspaper with advertising for alternative lifestyles and drug paraphernalia in every issue. Yet in the year leading up to the 2,000 presidential election RS magazine managed to produce an accurate insightful and damning story on presidential candidate George Bush. But you didn’t bother to read that and if you did you didn’t do anything with what you learned. Leading up to the 2,008 presidential election RS again produced an incredibly detailed fact based story on candidate John McCain. I read the story. I drew the conclusion that the USS Forrestal fire was a fragging1 incident gone bad. After reading the detailed account of the Senator’s life to that point I believe that one of John McCain’s fellow pilots had just had enough of Mr. McCain’s attitude, fired a missile at Mr. McCain’s aircraft and missed. In character with the rest of the story RS printed, Senator McCain released his bombs to roll away on the deck, and ran away as fast as he could to save his own skin. Years after the Forrestal fire, Senator Kerry threw his hat in the ring for President of the United States running against Senator McCain and the Grand Old Party didn’t hold back with the GOP’s version of Senator Kerry’s Vietnam War record. Now Senator Kerry served as a ground troop in Vietnam and Senator McCain served in the airforce. Senator Kerry crewed a riverboat at considerable risk and diligently filed the paperwork necessary for recognition of his service possibly shortening the time the Senator, then Vietnam soldier Kerry had his neck in the noose. The GOP found this to be a bad thing. where was Then airforce pilot John McCain? Go back and read the Rolling Stone article.
Jahar Tsarnaev made the August 2013 cover of the Rolling Stone. Cue the Dr. Hook song here please and United States citizens are up in arms. Why? Because the cover is a flattering photograph showing the Boston, MA Marathon Bomber (alleged) in a flattering light. Why are you up in arms about the cover photo? Because you’re too lazy to read the magazine article and see what the writer had to say about Mr. Tsarnaev and right on The Cover of the rolling Stone, issue 1188 August 1, 2013 is the headline:
The Bomber
How a Popular, Promising Student was Failed by his Family, Fell into Radical Islam and Became a Monster.
A Massachusetts police photographer releases police photographs because he doesn’t like the picture on the cover. How much longer would it take to read the title also on the cover?
What follows is twelve pages of what looks to be twelve point type, leaded by about 2 points and arranged in three columns per page for easy reading. Instead of reacting to a sound-bite or a newspaper headline why don’t you go down to your local library and read the story from front to back. Instead of taking the easy way out and repeating nonsense why not take the time to learn the rest of the story. Maybe you can help stop the next attack before it has a chance to get started.
How?
The Tsarnaev family came here with war damaged psyches. The brothers were good people who were lead astray by radicals. Instead of wasting your breath vilifying someone you know nothing about, why don’t you take the time to learn. Writer Janet Reitman put a lot of work into the story she wrote, the story called Jahar’s World. Miss Reitman has done all of the hard work all you have to do is read what she wrote.
Then what?
There are more good people in the world than there are bad people. The task of making the world a better place when spread over all of the good people is easier than the task of the bad people who want to tear the world apart. Yes, it’s easier to destroy than build but remember there are more people that want to build a better world than those that want to tear that world down. Just as a rising tide lifts all ships in the harbor, when you help your neighbor your life gets just that little bit better too.
1Fragging. Short for Fragmentation Grenade as used in the Vietnam war.
The killing of an officer by those under his command.
