We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
A blueberry bagel popped out of the toaster, and I spread some honey/pecan cream cheese on it, but only a thin layer. A bagel isn’t exactly a healthy breakfast, and lathering it with excessive cream cheese makes things worse.
Then I got sidetracked by a guitar advertisement on my phone and wound up looking at Fenders for a couple of minutes.
By the time I returned to my breakfast, I had forgotten about spreading cream cheese on the bagel already, and stuck a butter knife in the container to get some more.
When I realized my bagel already had more than enough on it, I thought of something I had recently read on social media about Charlie Kirk spreading hate.
Sufferin’ succotash, already!
I don’t see how it is possible to spread much more hate on American culture.
I mean, to achieve the same effect with your bagel, you’d have to shove the entire thing into the cream cheese container, put the lid back on it, and let it sit in your car for a couple of weeks.
Yep! That bagel smells like modern American culture now. Fetid, fusty, and funky.
Maybe we should just ban cream cheese altogether.
That’s what President Trump would probably do.
“We can’t let our wonderful country be run by taste buds,” the Orange Man might pronounce on Truth Social. “All cream cheese will be exported to Ecuador. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
And what exactly does hate mean, anyway? It’s one of those non-specific words politicians and pundits like to toss about to manipulate you.
I mean, I hate a lot of things: Falafel. Yellow jackets. I hate the Philadelphia Phillies so much that I have a hard time being open with anyone named Phil.
In all seriousness, I understand the kind of hate the pundits are talking about: the bankable rancor between liberals and conservatives regarding history, race relations, sexual gratification, and reproductive biology.
Good Lord! Will the cognitive dissonance ever end? Let’s say you’re the large man in striped shorts I saw buy two packs of Winstons at Dollar General yesterday.
If I tell you cigarettes are hazardous to your health, you might respond by saying research on cigarette smoking doesn’t prove squat.
You might even know more about such research than I do, but you like smoking, and you have solved your cognitive dissonance problem by telling yourself a convenient lie.
“Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.”
According to social psychologist Leon Festinger, “a man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree, and he turns away. Show him facts or figures, and he questions your sources. Appeal to logi,c and he fails to see your point.”
So much for the argumentative essay.
As I see it, the United States of America is hardly united anymore. The country is devolving into a maelstrom of hostile groups competing for somewhat limited resources.
And that’s a recipe for violence.
Reminds me of a line from the “Jason and the Argonauts” film when King Aeetes orders the skeleton troops to attack Jason and the men who stole the Golden Fleece – the limited resource.
“Destroy them. Kill, kill, kill, kill them all,” the king bellows as the “children of the hydra’s teeth” emerge from beneath the ground armed with swords and shields.
That scene terrified me as a child, which is probably why I remember it so well.
The only way to avoid the “kill them all” mentality in modern America is to establish common goals for ourselves, identify some common enemy we can unite against. At present, we only vacillate between a variety of human subcultures as enemies. Easy targets.
That doesn’t help much.
Or maybe we can all become Jedi Knights and followers of Yoda.
“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
Haven’t we all suffered enough?
More cream cheese, anyone?
Selah.