Me

Me

Friday, September 26, 2014

Word

    With the recent suspension of Bill Simmons from ESPN, which I think is a total load of bullsh*#, (#freebillsimmons) I started thinking more about words and the potential and real power they hold over their audience. If you are unawares of the story, he was suspended for 3 weeks for calling Roger Goddell a liar, essentially calling a spade a spade. But, I digress. ESPN is paid a massive sum by the NFL, it is a private company and they have a right to deal with the situation that clearly could have an effect on their business. Ironically, very much like the whole Phil Robertson being suspended by A&E for his cold declaration of thoughts on homosexuality. Both men said their peace, suffered the consequences of remarks in a private manner and the situation will  be forgotten no matter how many people think either man was unjustly treated for stating opinions. For some reason, we tend to forget that the first amendment does not protect us from the consequences of our free speech in the private world, it only makes clear we have a right to say what we feel in the public sphere without fear of prosecution from the government.

     But, what happens when those who use their speech for utterly irresponsible purposes, under the guise of beliefs, ideology, campaigning, general demagoguery and the likes without any sense of consequences? How can we as an educated society not hold them responsible for their irresponsible use of oratory or written practices? Because lately we are just letting people spout off large piles of virile male cow dung without proper responses and that is dangerous. I am guilty of letting is slide for sure. Why start an issue when facts, truth, compassion or empathy no longer matter in forming our ideas of the world at large? It is like we have reduced ourselves to the middle ages, where we let people tell us what we should believe. Here is where the issue is really starting to bother me, it is getting to the point where we are letting people outright LIE to us and those around us with not much more than a shrug of the shoulders. If it is not an outright lie, it is the most ignorant unintelligible idea ever being uttered with no challenge in sight. This is DANGEROUS. This is how angry mobs start, it is how fighting, wars, and persecution begin. I am not being an alarmist, go pick up a history book. Read about the Salem witch trials, listen to an Adolf Hitler speech in 1933. Why do you think places like China and Russia restrict certain forms of speech? The ultimate paradox of words, the have the great potential to create knowledge, but they also have to great potential to cause great harm to the human race.

     I am bringing this up simply to remind us that words have tremendous power. We need to wield them wisely and justly. Fresh from reading an article about present day negative Muslim sentiments in American society, (because apparently we no longer can distinguish bad guys from good guys. Also there are A LOT of despicable people in the world who call themselves a Christian or a Jew, does not make all of them bad. However, apparently some of us does not posses the logic to go that far.) I thought this post was even more apropos than ever. From the completely ignorant Oklahoma State Senator calling the religion a "Cancer that needs to be cut from the world." To the Kenosha lady I had to great pleasure to disagree with a few years back who refused to believe what she thought the religion practiced to be wrong, and it was very very very very very wrong. (By the way I was fresh off a course about the Crusades and a family member conversion to the religion, she was out of her league in this argument.) What pained me the most in this conversation, aside from the fact that she had no facts, was that she using what her "pastor" told her as a defense. Clearly her "pastor" was either ridiculously ignorant of the facts himself or was out right lying, which I am more prone to believe. Like the Oklahoma Senator, or any other politician for that matter, it has been practice du jour for them as of recent to incite dark emotion to elicit votes or followers. From Michele Bachmann to Debbie Wasserman Shultz (I might lean liberal, but took great offense at her light reference in comparing the state of WI to an abused woman.) the dark shit oozing from their upper orifices in wholly irresponsible.

    Words equal power. Words call people to action. Lately, we the people, have not be very discriminatory on who, what, and why we are listening. We take celebrities, with negligible education, who feign knowledge on a subject at face value. We argue with our doctors, dentists, lawyer, and what not because we've "heard" differently from somewhere else. We spread vitriolic articles, blog posts, and manifestos without stopping and taking the time to think of what they are actually saying. We ignore real facts because they do not jibe with what we want to believe and we do not question those who play our emotions like a fiddle during a square dancing session. Words can be dangerous. Read them critically, write them contentiously, speak them justly, and share them warily. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.