The Rock

I have thought long and hard on whether I should say anything beyond my last Sunday Message about the Charlottesville thing.  You see, I believe the only true thing said from anyone on this whole deal was when Trump said there was hate on both sides.  But, that's been said.

  There are whys and wherefores aplenty to be had, depending on who you want to listen to- of course, to be a MODERN pundit, you must split what you "listen to" into 2 camps.  One is the side you agree with, and those on that side must be agreed with- or, if you aren't particularly comfortable with a particular point, ignored.

  The other side is "the enemy", and your interaction- at least from what I've seen- is to combat conversations with news clips (doctored to your specifications), memes, and insults.  By no means act like you have heard or understood what someone from this group says, and should they try to convince you to look at both sides as they have (IF they have), you should immediately accuse them of ignorance of your brand of revisionist history, declare them to be "self-righteous", or just accuse them of posting stuff that someone else posted, because after all they all look the same.  Your only purpose in reading their posts is to use the weapons of troll-dom to launch sophomoric personal attacks.


But, y'know what? Pundits are a penny a pound, and the only ones getting paid are the ones who have a vested self-interest in teaching us how to act like absolute assholes in conducting "intelligent debate."

And here am I, another pundit, with something for you to think about.  I want you for just a moment to cast off the politics, the agendas, the cameras, the he said-she said and allow me to boil down what happened Saturday to its essence.


That essence starts with a beautiful young woman, with all the potential in the world, who died Saturday.  Now, I want you to think about why she died.

Here are some of the reasons that are NOT why she died.

She didn't die because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She didn't die because some politician, or groups of them, stirred the pot a bit too much.
She didn't die because some people were defending their heritage, speaking out for racial equality, expressing their small-minded and petty hatreds, or getting paid to show up where they had no business being.
She didn't die because Donald Trump didn't say white bigotry, Obama didn't say Islamic terrorists, George Soros or the Koch Brothers spent money, or Robert E Lee had slaves.
She didn't even die because some mentally-challenged individual was off his meds.

Now, let me give you the core reason why she died.


She died because she was protesting in favor of the removal of some hunk of damned rock that never hurt anyone.

She died because part of our society said that rock was evil, and others said it was good.


It was a damned ROCK.  Not evil, not good, just a hunk of carved marble.


Sure it symbolized something.  But who decides that?  Did she die for or against a symbol?

No.  She died over a damnable ROCK.  Do you get that?  Do you see what this society has become?

If we want to achieve peace and unity here on this world, then we have to stop fighting and dying over symbols.  But everything has to be one side or the other nowadays.  If this damn rock is a symbol to someone else, I can't just walk away.  I can't just "change the channel".  And I sure can't listen to why the damn rock means something to the next guy.  I have to polarize it, vilify it, blow it up until it becomes a caricature of a caricature of what it was intended to be.

And if someone has to die because of how they feel about the rock, so be it.  As long as I get to have MY way about the rock.