The torn curtain

It's Sunday morning, and I just posted this to my FB feed:

You know, I am really trying to be nice today and not react to all the baiting being done on my feed by our stupid political atmosphere- particularly involving sports. When it comes to sports, I want to watch A GAME. I don't want to hear about anyone's political views, I don't want to worry about the NFL commissioner being a hypocrite (which he is) or which player is acting for a valid cause and which one's just a reverse racist (which many are). Nor do I need the President, who maintains an office that SHOULD be both respected and exude respect for others, mouthing off as if he's at a bar with the guys. I want you people that think kneeling down is good to go away, I want you people that think it's treason to go away, I want the politicians to go away, I want the people who are doing the kneeling down to go away, I want the handful of douchebags in law enforcement that make make such protests possible to go away, I want the racists and assorted other categories at the top of our "intellectual level" to go away, and JUST LET ME WATCH THE FRICKIN' GAME! Is that so much to ask?


Not too long ago, I responded to a woman on someone else's post who was whining in her unintelligent way about the "Orange Nazi".  I replied to her, "No, the problem is that this nation has lost its respect for much of what we once held dear.  At this rate, we'll soon be a nation of two-year-olds, all of us sitting with our backs to each other pouting.  Is this what you really want?"

Or words to that effect.


But I was WRONG.


After praying about the whole thing earlier, I realized that it ISN'T what we are becoming- it's nothing new.  We've always been less a nation and more a bunch of feuding babies.  Whatever legit emotion Colin Kaepernick has when he- well, when he USED to kneel down- it's been there in his kindreds for years.  Mouthing off and making sport (if you can call it that) the President has been done for years.  Regular Joes mouthing off about things they either couldn't possibly understand, are to lazy to look into past what somebody tells them, Ivory tower "teachers" trying to guide young minds not into education, but into their own preferred polemic, for years.


The difference being, we used to wall it off with curtains of decency and civility.  We kept things not fit for public consumption FROM public consumption.  Say what you will about Donald Trump, but the worst thing he did was to tear the last curtain down, so that the President, too, exposes his "uncivil side" to everyone, just like the rest of us.


So to wrap this up, to the world at large and whoever wants to take individual offense from this- You really should just shut up for a while.  Realize every judgment you bring down on someone else you are bringing the same down on yourself.  You may think that your intelligence, or your concept of faith, or your "care and concern" elevates you above the masses.  But in the words of a popular philosopher every bit as stupid and self-righteous as myself, "What difference, now, does it really make?"