Day 1231 – Alexander Botts and Evil
Tuesday June 2, 2020
152 Days until the election on November 3rd
232 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
Alexander Botts was a salesman who worked for The Earthworm Tractor Factory. He sent reports back to the home office. Everything sounded very formal bureacratic phrasing, but as you read on you realized that Botts created huge problems for himself and others. He never saw it that way. They were merely the facts of what went on and he then explained how he dealt with whatever came up.
These were humorous stories written in the 1920s and 30s. I guess you could call Botts a clueless good natured positivity person.
But what if he wasn’t? What if he saw nothing wrong in doing bad things? Not that he would be aware they were bad, but he had a predilection to doing bad things, what then? What if he saw the world, not through the sort of rose colored glasses that he filled his reports with, but instead supposed the world was full of people out to get him and what he had done. What if he imagined vast dark conspiracies where there were none? What if he thought he was really smart, when in fact he was not? What if he felt he could only trust himself and maybe a few close family members – all of whom either shared his world view or at least played up to his thoughts about the world?
What if Botts not only saw most people as out to get him and he lashed out at them with crazy non-facts and conspiracy accusations? What if he found others to believe as he did?
Do you see where I’m going with this? (No, then you’re probably a Fox News/Donald Trump devotee.)
Some pretty wild stuff is being talked about. It started for me with the running argument I had with my right wing friend and her pals. This guy, whom I didn’t know, felt it a good idea to interject himself in the Facebook conversation by insulting me indirectly with comments like “Who is this turd?” Nice stuff. He eventually explained to me why he was against mail in ballots. It turns out he said that the Democrats could insert isotopes into the ballots that could be read and flip a Republican vote to a Democratic vote.
Somehow I had missed this reason for not letting millions of people vote by mail. I asked him to let me know more. Maybe he can find some of these ballots. Wouldn’t that be cool? I also asked my friend to let me know what he finds out. She assured me she would. Great!
It occurred to me that those on the right accuse those on the left of the very things they themselves are doing. This is an old trick and is often illustrated by quotes from Hitler about such things. Hillary Clinton said what? Three decades ago? That there was “a vast right wing conspiracy.” She was mocked by that very group of cabals for saying it. She was entirely correct. I realized this morning that there is no such apparatus on the left. I mean the right loves to accuse George Soros of all sorts of unspeakable ills, but he’s one guy who has given money to more liberal causes than these folks on the right who are highly organized and have figured out all kinds of shady ways to give money to political and cultural pressure groups. But then I realized the right was correct, there is a vast group assembled against their interests and ambitions. It’s called Western Civilization.
When these right wingers bitch and fletch about people disparaging them what they are really saying is they can’t get their way because there are these institutions and people in their way. Who are those people and institutions? Let me make up a label to throw on them. Just pulling it out of the air mind you, let’s call them Rational people and they are supported by institutes of higher learning, scientists, and anyone with a real education and any knowledge. This is not to say that folks on the right are uneducated heathens. No, they’ve been educated, but somewhere along the way something happened.
Years ago I had a friend who wanted to read I-Ching cards. Okay, that sounded like fun. Let’s do it. But it wasn’t fun. She believed whatever it was that could be interpreted from a random throwing down of these thick paper nicely illustrated cards.
I’ve told the story of the woman who said her friend had her palm read. I said, “I can read palms!” She thrust her hand out. My desire was not to read her palm, but the best I would get was to hold the back of her hand. I said things I overheard when I had been around palm readings. I told her about her money-line, and the number of crinkles on the edge of her palm indicated the number of children she was going to have. I started to laugh because it was so ridiculous. She looked up – very seriously, and said, “Go on.” And looked back down at her palm.
I know I’ve told these stories before. The palm reading one ends with my staring at the top of her downturned head, and my concluding that shooting fish in a barrel was not a good idea, nor something I wanted to do in the future.
I am amazed from time to time, how someone who I’ve known for a period of time then reveals a really bat shit crazy side of themselves. Maybe, it’s a belief in something they have heard from somebody, somewhere, they can’t remember exactly. It doesn’t matter where they heard it. It matters that they believe it. “You know that’s crazy right?” “Well, yes, but maybe it’s true. Or at least part of it? Don’t you think?” (Yes, I think. You don’t. You worry. You work yourself up into a tizzy over something that is patently false and has no basis in fact, but please – go on.)
PS Dat am one big linga!
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