THE GOOD SIDE

  There are times that I absolutely despair about humankind. I wonder if we ever really and truly climbed out of the slime or are we still mired in it, deeply so. I wonder if the creation of man had a glitch, or a purposely left weak point, demanding that humankind pull itself out of the muck, demand standards of morality and always try to progress. The path to improvement would be in the hands of humankind and brother, but have we fallen down on the job.

The history of humans is rife with wars, large and small. I do wonder if any war can be called 'minor', for the grief of the loss of a loved one or the destruction of one's home, the rape that seemingly always accompanies the victors, much to the horror of women, - all that is not ever 'minor'. Never.

We claim to be better than the animals over which we have dominion. We label certain misbehaviors and aberrations of humankind under the cover of the names of animals. i.e. the person is a snake, or he is a wolf, or she is a fox and on and on. Yet we are the ones who have decided to apportion this behavior to the animals and then labeled people with the names. But we are the ones who do this. We are the ones who supposedly have the higher thinking power, the strength to overcome instincts, the power to ideate and progress. But do we? And if we do, why do we consistently refuse to leave the muck behind, willingly crawling back into it?

There are so many examples of this behavior. A video from 2013 shows the now embattled NRA president involved in shooting elephants, doing a hell of a miserable job, wounding and shooting again and again, even as his wife shot her own 'prize', holding up the tail of one of the most intelligent animals alive as a symbol of victory. Really? How has she missed all the shots and videos of elephants joining a circle to protect their young and weak, or working together to help a young one stuck in a physical mudhole, even as we remain in our moral one!!

The crap of humankind never seems to end. In fact, of late, we seem to be reverting once again en- masse, wholesale, shall we say. One idiot in Louisiana states that the children in school should be taught the "good side of slavery". You read that right. The 'good' side. Is there? Perhaps one owner did not allow severe whipping or did not sell and break apart families. Or perhaps there were none. Or perhaps some people like to be enslaved, their very lives in the hands of others with no say about it at all, no legal recompense, for 'property' has no voice in courts! The good side indeed!

Follow the meaning of this idiot's statement. So there must have been a 'good' side to the Tuskegee horrifying project. Or there must have been a 'good' side in the injecting of prisoners with viruses and experimental medicines without their consent or knowledge. Or there must have been a 'good' side to the genocide planned by the Nazis against the Jewish people and  all the scientific processes and knowledge that came out of it, out of the absolute inhumane experiments they performed on the prisoners, men, women, children, and even the unborn. No. there is most eminently NO good side to any of this.

This dangerous stupidity is evidenced all over the place these days. Partisanship demands that no progress be made at all in any of so many needy areas. Let families go hungry. Stand aside and watch how a country such as India falls apart under an overwhelming pandemic. Such a 'good' side, for we can then plan our own needs in such a time!! Stand aside and watch inhumanities taking place all over the world and stay silent, for otherwise business might suffer! See, the 'good' side is that there will be jobs! Never mind the reek, the coppery odor that pervades these jobs.

There is always an excuse, always a desire, demand and action to be ignorant of the 'wrong' side, of the evil inherent in oppression, in the relegating of a segment of other humans as being of lesser value, good for the 'good' side of nastiness and horror, allowing for new ideas to be able to be investigated with no boundaries and then use the knowledge gained to improve the life of the rest of humanity.

NO! Most emphatically no. There is no "good" side to slavery. There is no good to be found in evil. Making excuses, looking away from the evil, from the suffering, from the very 'wrongness' of it, only pushes us back, further, deeper into the muck. Do you not think it about time that we pull and push and shove and claw our way out of this moral muck, out of excuses for doing wrong, for seeking good where there is none?

If not now, then when? And if not us, then who?