Beware

Beware the selfishly stupid and the stupidly selfish. This is the single greatest danger to your health and safety every single day, the dangerous results of the lazy, ignorant, the arrogant and vain, those who would cut a corner to save a minute when lives hang in the balance, or when lives hang in the balance two or three or fifteen steps down the critical path.

These are the money-grubbing, lazy bastards who loaded oxygen generators onto the ValueJet aircraft, and murdered everyone aboard. It was easier to break the rules than do it the right way, and they killed everyone aboard.

These are the bastards who supply sub-standard wire and faulty electronic gear to US military combat equipment. What I would give to put them into a helicopter, strap them in tight, and tell them that the entire helo had been running on their shitty wire for the last 600 flight hours.

These are the bastards for whom it is more important to be talking on the phone behind the wheel of their vehicle at 75 mph than it is to actively pay attention to the health, welfare, and safety of those in their car, and those in the cars around them.

These are the morons who whip into your lane of traffic because they can't wait another 20 seconds behind the metrobus picking up its passengers.

These are the idiots who read books and do crossword puzzles in traffic.

These are the idiots who are brushing their teeth and putting on their makeup as they drive down the highway at 10 mph over the posted speed limit.

These are the morons who think safety is for someone else.

These are the morons who think that what they are doing, where they are going, what they have scheduled is infinitely more important than the exact same things for all of the other people out there in the world, whom they don't know and can't for one second think about.

Beware those who justify actions and beliefs based on religion. Divine sanction is an express ticket to immediate, unquestionable, unflinching justification for any action, any at all. If God wills it done, then it's okay to put you down. If God approves, then it's okay not only to dislike your clothing, or your haircut, your tattoos or your piercings. It's also okay to condemn the way you live, the friends you choose, the belief system you have chosen for yourself. It's not only okay, but also mandated that active measures must be taken to communicate to you the intolerance and the imagined/mythical consequences of your way of existence.

If God is behind it, then it's not just a good idea, not just a way of life or a suggestion for enaction, but it's Sacred Duty. It's not a recommendation; it's an imperative. If I want to get into my religion's definition of heaven, then I'd better do what they (the self-appointed arbiters of the teachings and interpretation) say, regardless of how ridiculous or vicious it is. It becomes a test, a measure of how far I'm willing to go to get into heaven. Depending on my self-image and estimate of self-worth, depending on how comfortable I am in my own skin, I could reject this bullshit and embrace a common-sensical public moral, a simple live-and-let-live, or I could cave and do anything, absolutely anything to have a group to fit into, to have a place that will accept me and value me and nurture me, if I only do exactly what is expected of me. If that's your measure for entry into heaven, then I'm happy to oblige. In fact, I'll go you one better and take it even farther, because that could only serve to make God that much more happy (if God is the Alpha and Omega, how is it possible to make him more happy?). Just ask bomber-murderer Eric Rudolph about this.

If God is behind it, then female genital mutilation insidiously changes from ritual application of male dominance and horrific physical assault to a divinely sanctioned cultural and religious obligation. Objection and refusal are not acts of self-determination, but are acts of apostasy and heresy, with all of the available tools of condemnation and retribution so easily at hand.

If God is behind it, then traveling thousands of miles to wage war upon a people who are not and never have been a threat to you, your family, your town/village, your nation, or your way of life is not only a good idea, but a Supreme Obligation. Just ask the Crusaders. Just ask George W. Bush and his cynical cabal of industrio-evangelists.

If God is behind it, I'm allowed to revel in your pain and anguish. I'm not only allowed to privately criticize you and your life, but am compelled! to picket funerals with offensive placards, yelling vicious epithets at the grieving. I am to be happy in your pain, in the punishment you are receiving due to your poor choices. Yeah, I'm talking about that vicious fuck who yells anti-gay epithets at AIDS victims' funerals, and who calls himself a man of religion. I don't remember the part in the Bible where Jesus talked about glorying in the death and sorrow of those who don't subscribe.

If God is behind it, then I'll happily drink that purple Kool-Aid packed with the divine arsenic.

If God is behind it, then I guess I'd better give up my 14-year-old daughter for marriage to a lecherous old man who already has six wives, who just loves his religion because it justifies his deviationist sexual pleasure in female servitude and morally-sanctioned sexual adventurism. Just go ask the Utah/Arizona polygamists.

If God is behind it, then it's okay to beat a child to death for a childish mistake. Go ask the fundamentalist cultists.

If God is behind it, then I not only knowingly allow my children be sexually and physically abused by the High Priest and his twisted criminal cohorts, because that must be God's way, but I revel in being chosen for the honor. Just ask the Branch Davidians. Just go ask the Catholics across the United States and the world.

If God is behind it, then why would I believe my child when he/she tells me of sexual and physical abuse? If God is behind it, why would I rat out my church? Why would I bring down my wonderful institution of learning and caring and succor and spiritual fulfillment, if after all, they're just abusing my children? It must be part of the Big Plan, somehow, at least that's what the bishop is putting out, at least that's the message I'm gettting from the church and police inaction on the decades of predatory criminal activity.

If God is behind me, then how could I possibly be to blame for pulling my peaceful neighbors from their homes and torturing them to death, or until the point when they renounce their own religion in favor of mine? Just ask the Iberian Jews of Inquisition Spain.

Beware those with obvious chips on their shoulders. They could be the angry disabled, the short, the dispossessed, the downtrodden, or those pathological nutbars who just can't win, and who find their identity in being a punching bag for all of life. These are the folks who crack, who snap, and kill 17 co-workers down at the Coca-Cola bottling plant on a Thursday afternoon. These are the guys and gals, but mostly guys, who go postal, who take it only so much, only so far, and then just absolutey explode. You can spot these folks, and most of us know at least one. Keep an eye on them, because you never know when they'll finally step off that balance beam of sanity into the full embrace of psychosis.

Beware, because all of these folks are out there. And there a lot more of them than you'd think. Common sense is not a weapon with these folks. Nor is anger and force; that just confirms their delusional beliefs, pre-instilled promises and prophecies of rejection and opposition to their righteous path. They're in positions or public esteem, positions of trust and power and moral voice and superiority. These folks are our elected leaders, our religious representatives, and the easygoing public servants we work with day after day. These folks are over the place, and chances are they have more than enough reason to dislike you just because of who you are, what you believe, and what you think. If you don't agree you're not just different, but you are a dangerous threat, a blot of insidious opposition that could one day grow and reproduce and cause problems for their ideas and their plans. These folks want it all, and more than enough of them have big plans for getting there. Just look at our current government for examples through and through. Beware, and be on the lookout.