Metaphysic Storm

The message that most Christians cling to is the aggressive ethic of reciprocity and the Judge-not. Beside the ridiculous logical ad infinitum of giving till someone has to break down and take, and the lack of justice Judge-not promotes, the two core tenets of Christianity leads to a life of bird nests without a hen guarding the eggs. I presume that most Christians regard the doing to others and lack of justice to be metaphorical: The domain of god. No one but the masochist would present the other check and desire anarchy.

Where is the line then that justifies retaliation on an oppressor? At first I thought this was a case for fuzzy logic, but logic defies fuzz. What at first seemed to me to be a complex issue really isn’t. Treat others as they treat you: point blank. This works well for those that are in the now but it eeks upon personal identity. That is the reason I have always promoted individuality. We can not be held accountable for the wrongs of our ancestors any more that we can take the credit for the work of dead individual artists.

Only the future inhabitants of earth are tied to our wrongs. It’s extortion and depressingly those geezers that are alive today wouldn’t change what they did 60 years ago.
However, those that cling onto their identity the actions of ancestors can logically be accountable for the wrongs of their predecessors. Call yourself an “American” and be held accountable for the terroristic acts of this Nations founders. By treating others as they treat your self only an act of aggression is legitimately countered with aggression. Hit me brother and I’ll hit you back. The Mercy high ground is interesting territory. Typically mercy can be given when enough attention is paid to empathy; unfortunately for most only the closer someone is to oneself the easier it is to empathize. That’s even more reason to embrace the principle of equality, individuality and justice.

I’m one and you’re one to. We’re one and one. But we can equal two as one if we both try.

In a recent trip to California on a Greyhound bus in southwest Texas we pulled over for a illegal alien / drug search. The men in rip resistant green boarded the bus packin’ 9 millimeters and walked down the aisle. A young bow legged Homeland boarder agent with a ten gallon hat poked down the rows asking everyone if they were American. I found this to be a strange question because everyone from the north pole to the tip of chili is an American. I was going to say, “I’m American if you consider New Orleans a member of the union”, but decided not to be smart and answered yes.

While the dogs were sniffing my luggage an Asian couple were having a problem with an agent. The girl was obviously a US resident or a master of accents. Her boyfriend however didn’t speak English that well. Through the discourse I discovered that he is a Viet Nam citizen visiting her girlfriends parents. The agent asked him for a green card. which he didn’t have. I over heard the agents outside the bus, “should we detain him?” was asked to the cowboy. He replied, “How much time do we have left?” Then the cowboy asked the driver how much behind schedule we were: an hour and a half.

I sat in my seat wondering why their weren’t any Geiger counters accompanying the German Shepard’s and why the Viet Nam guy needed a green card and not a passport. It may just be me but I felt as though the Men in Green are a prelude to a more severe and intrusive biased Nationalism. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. I can easily look past a cowboy Homeland agent using improper geographical language but I can’t help but think our bus would have been held up had the Vietnamese fellow been Arabic.

Maybe it wasn’t the slanted eyes that got our bus back on schedule. Maybe it was the fuzzy teddy bear that he used as a pillow that fostered his travel without proper identification. At any speed, we arrived at the next gas station were dozens of “south of the boarder” neighbors were waiting outside in the cold for what was most likely a law breaking contractor.