Partisan Tribalism And Injustice

Courtesy NY Magazine

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.   Martin Luther King, Jr

Despite our efforts to eradicate them, the indelible memories are those of distasteful, pernicious events implanted in the our minds return, often unannounced, flooding our thoughts with the same emotions we experienced when they occurred.

For me, the most hated, unpleasant of memories is that of the unforgettable stench of racism and xenophobia which permeated life as a teen during the nineteen-fifties and sixties.  Hovering in the air like a poisonous gas surreptitiously invading our souls the moment we disregarded the dangers and breathed in the noxious fumes of bigotry.  The poison didn’t just exist, it thrived when I was young.  For decades we erroneously thought it was subdued, relegated to the dark, foul sewage that is bad memories.  However; in truth, it was simply laying in wait to continue its destructive invasion, awaiting willing hosts to spread to spread it among the unwitting.

Bigotry’s twin, injustice, seemed to wane a bit as well, but together they now creep along the paths of humanity, seeking the slightest of opportunities to infect.

Well camouflaged amongst assumption and opinion, injustice is unconditionally destructive to individuals and entire civilizations deluded by its capricious nature as it worms into the cracks and crevices created by naïveté and opinion.

Capitalizing on those naive and opinionated are those who seek to advance their self-serving agendas. The guilty, the sanctimonious and the egotistical, using rhetorical dogma and diversion to segregate themselves from truth and justice, attempt to create the illusion that justice is injustice for them, thereby perverting justice for all.

In what has become a political circus in our nation’s capital, we witness, virtually every day, attempts to pervert justice. Yet; even more worrisome are those utterly blinded by acceptance of unfounded, fallacious claims of “justice”.

We’ve grown accustomed to watching justice unfold before our eyes in the various forms of media.  Likewise; we’ve grown accustomed to inserting our opinions, judging juries, and denigrating the courts.  But justice must remain blind; it cannot be commutated using hegemony and opinion disguised as justice and it must be allowed to run its course, despite our discomfort with the outcome.

As we watch our elected officials attempt to disrupt and thwart justice for the sake of partisan dogma, take care that your own patrimonial naïveté, brought about by the same tribalistic partisanship, doesn’t permit the worms of injustice to creep into and consume your mind, for injustice can easily disguises itself as justice, living comfortably among the complacent.

The Fossil Fuels of the Future

T-rump Courtesy Daily KOS

Culture; commonly defined as customary beliefs, social forms and norms, material traits of a racial, religious, or social group, foods, and laws shared by people in a place or time.  

All humans, whomever and wherever we are, tend to establish these defining characteristics as an extension of who we are by assuming our cultural identities as our own, sometimes to the detriment of the very cultures with which we identify.

Throughout human history, cultures have influenced virtually every aspect of our lives.  It determines what and how we eat, how we view and interact with one another, our religious and political preferences, our housing and even our sexual behavior.

We can certainly reject some of the attributes of our cultures, however, none can authoritatively claim the overly coveted “self-determined individual”, for there are far too many factors influencing our lives.  From the moment we’re born, until we’re pushing up daisies, we become little more than the sum of our surroundings, influenced by other people and the cultures in which we’re born.

Likewise; merging and converging cultures, or “transculturation”, has unavoidable effects on all aspects of life for us.   As with each human, cultures influence and change other cultures as well.  Through the technological advances influencing today’s trade, exploration/tourism, migration, and even war, cultures change via appropriation of the attributes of other cultures.

From food to dress; from religion to politics, cultures have and will continue to impact others.

This phenomenon is not without conflict, however, and those vociferously opposing the idea of blending cultures, desiring to remain isolated, fail to realize that all modern cultures are, and will continue to be, representative of almost every other culture on the planet.

And this fact creates opportunity for two very distinct choices; hegemony and harmony.

The convergence of cultures screams opportunities in education, personal growth, and expansion of one’s understanding of the world; in short, wisdom.  And, in todays world, it also screams necessity for change, for acceptance of and growth within this challenge, much in the same manner as biological evolution, will ensure survival of the culturally fit.

Regardless of personal preferences, converging cultures WILL evolve and survive.  It is inevitable, for one cultural identity simply cannot exist in a global society of many cultures, and we are now, much to the dismay of some, a global community.

The technological advances shrinking Planet Earth have ensured inevitable changes, and they will continue to drive cultural evolution, leaving behind those who cannot, or will not, evolve.

And what of those who are themselves products of the very enculturation of generations before them, yet, in their own hegemonic bigotry, intolerance, and xenophobia, choose to ignore this evolutionary fact?

Like the prima donna dinosaurs they are, they will be left to decay, leaving behind nothing but fossils for a culturally advanced civilization to marvel upon.

Insert Trump comments below.