The whole situation that occurred last night was nothing but my dancing around the fact that I now need to settle down and get back to work on "Place of Safety." The fact is, it's probably a good idea to get it done before the end of the world...which, with all the disasters and absolute assholiness (and I deliberately spelled it this way) going on everywhere right now, may come sooner than later. It seems even Hamas, a terrorist group that now runs the Gaza Strip, has been called too moderate by some Islamic freaks, who then brutally murdered an Italian man who was trying to help the Palestinian people.
That's something radicals never seem to understand -- there will always be someone more radical than they are, be it to the left or right. And once a person or group is radicalized, you cannot stop them or control them. Which the GOP is finding out about the Tea Partiers. They fed them lies and half-truths and all sorts of snake oil, thinking they could control them, and now the little pinheads have their minds made up. Now the Tea Party idiots would happily let the US government shut down and default on its debts just to get their own way, all lead by their figurehead-bitches, Sarah and Michelle. They've taken "No Surrender" to its logical conclusion and don't care if it means the end of life as we know it...and the Republicans have become their attack dogs, whether they want to be or not, because one wrong step and they get banished from the pack.
This is also how the Unionists were in Northern Ireland...how Ian Paisley used to be before he finally realized he was achieving nothing with his brand of absolute hatred. It was like that for hundreds of years throughout Ireland, with Protestants' hatred of Catholics used to excuse all sorts of abuses, and it became even more vicious after partition. That's when anti-Catholicism and hate were codified into law. But you could not get any Protestant at that time to admit they were even being unfair, let alone unreasonable. It was all the Catholics' fault for being Catholic.
So now that Paisley and Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein are working together to build peace, they're faced with the specter of radicals within their own ranks who will bomb and kill just to make themselves a name. A young Catholic PSNI cop was killed recently and people on both sides of the divide got together to protest it. But no one's been caught or turned in, yet...so there are even some who will still protect those who want nothing but chaos.
And that is what it boils down to -- those who want chaos instead of order. There are a myriad of reasons for people to try and bring that about, and you cannot stop it with reason or pleading or even imprisonment. I'm reminded of how the world used to be 2000 years ago. To illustrate it, I'll paraphrase an old saying, "The more I see of men, the more I understand why armies used to just wipe out cities they conquered." It cut down on problems of revenge that would crop up later if they didn't do that.
Which leads me back to my avoidance. I know I'll be dealing with this in the book, to an extent. So maybe it's best I have a job and these travels I must take, since they keep me from getting lost in the narrative of anger and hate. Man, while writing the third draft of "The Lyons' Den" I started getting just as crazy as Daniel. So I identify deeply with my characters and their trials, travails and tribulations. (And I know according to "Strunk & White" I'm supposed to put a comma after "travails," but I just can't; it just does not look right to me.)
ANY-way...sometimes chaos is good for an artist. To use another quote -- "Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." (Hat tip to "Harry Lime" in "The Third Man.")
What more could I add to that?
That's something radicals never seem to understand -- there will always be someone more radical than they are, be it to the left or right. And once a person or group is radicalized, you cannot stop them or control them. Which the GOP is finding out about the Tea Partiers. They fed them lies and half-truths and all sorts of snake oil, thinking they could control them, and now the little pinheads have their minds made up. Now the Tea Party idiots would happily let the US government shut down and default on its debts just to get their own way, all lead by their figurehead-bitches, Sarah and Michelle. They've taken "No Surrender" to its logical conclusion and don't care if it means the end of life as we know it...and the Republicans have become their attack dogs, whether they want to be or not, because one wrong step and they get banished from the pack.
This is also how the Unionists were in Northern Ireland...how Ian Paisley used to be before he finally realized he was achieving nothing with his brand of absolute hatred. It was like that for hundreds of years throughout Ireland, with Protestants' hatred of Catholics used to excuse all sorts of abuses, and it became even more vicious after partition. That's when anti-Catholicism and hate were codified into law. But you could not get any Protestant at that time to admit they were even being unfair, let alone unreasonable. It was all the Catholics' fault for being Catholic.
So now that Paisley and Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein are working together to build peace, they're faced with the specter of radicals within their own ranks who will bomb and kill just to make themselves a name. A young Catholic PSNI cop was killed recently and people on both sides of the divide got together to protest it. But no one's been caught or turned in, yet...so there are even some who will still protect those who want nothing but chaos.
And that is what it boils down to -- those who want chaos instead of order. There are a myriad of reasons for people to try and bring that about, and you cannot stop it with reason or pleading or even imprisonment. I'm reminded of how the world used to be 2000 years ago. To illustrate it, I'll paraphrase an old saying, "The more I see of men, the more I understand why armies used to just wipe out cities they conquered." It cut down on problems of revenge that would crop up later if they didn't do that.
Which leads me back to my avoidance. I know I'll be dealing with this in the book, to an extent. So maybe it's best I have a job and these travels I must take, since they keep me from getting lost in the narrative of anger and hate. Man, while writing the third draft of "The Lyons' Den" I started getting just as crazy as Daniel. So I identify deeply with my characters and their trials, travails and tribulations. (And I know according to "Strunk & White" I'm supposed to put a comma after "travails," but I just can't; it just does not look right to me.)
ANY-way...sometimes chaos is good for an artist. To use another quote -- "Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." (Hat tip to "Harry Lime" in "The Third Man.")
What more could I add to that?
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