Hassagot השגות

Avoid the Temptation

Avoid the temptation to confuse these terms:

Anocracy and Democracy

Autocracy and Democracy

Kakistocracy and Democracy

Kleptocracy and Democracy

Kraterocracy and Democracy

Leukocracy and Democracy

Plutocracy and Democracy

Timocracy and Democracy

 

 

Looking for someone to hate

I looked for someone to hate. 

Someone told me: there's someone to blame.

There's someone who infected you.  Some country, some lab somewhere, some ethnicity.

There's someone who's is responsible for your being sick.  Some former president. Some international health organization. 

There's someone who made you lose your job over a silly little disease that only kills old people, criminals, people of color - not regular people.  Some governor, some mayor.

There's someone who took away your freedom.  Who wants to enslave you over a silly little pandemic that has claimed more American lives than the Korean War, than the Vietnam War...  Some political party.

There's someone who pretends you're sick.  Who inflates the numbers of victims.  Some deep-state bureaucrats churning out fake numbers.  Wait, I just heard that my aide is sick with covid-19.

Someone told me:  Hate would liberate me.  Hate would take away the pain.

I looked for someone to hate.

I sought him, but could not find him.

I Used to Think That

I used to think that

• secularists did not value life
• secularists could not value life
• religious traditionalists valued life
• only religious traditionalists could value life
• only those who treasured the potential for human life in the womb could be relied on to treasure human life outside the womb

I made a bargain

• I accepted patriarchy for the sake of life
• I turned a blind eye to racism for the sake of life

I saw 

• guardians of the womb clamoring for the death of those outside the womb
• guardians of personal autonomy clamoring for the life of those outside the womb

I came to understand that

• those who value life value life

I can no longer keep that bargain I made; I can no longer accept patriarchy and even racism as the price for valuing life.

Give Me Liberty or

"Give me liberty, or give me death!" is a quotation attributed to Patrick Henry from a speech he made to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775,^[1] at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia. - Wikipedia (visited 5/1/2020)

Variations for the age of covid-19...

Give me liberty and give me death

Give me liberty to gather for parties, weddings, religious services, funerals, rallies and give me death

Give me liberty and give the cities death

Give me liberty and give Democratic-voting people death

Give me liberty and give grandma death

Give me liberty and give residents of nursing homes death

Give me liberty and give prisoners death

Give me liberty and give people who don't look me death

Give me liberty and give illegal immigrants death

Give me liberty to run my meat-packing plant without adequate protections for my workers and give my workers death

Give me liberty to force poor people to return to unsafe work environments on pain of losing benefits and give them death

 

For want of a swab

For want of a nail the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe the horse was lost;
For want of a horse the battle was lost... —Unattributed
from Fifty Famous People by James Baldwin^[3] (see Wikipedia, "For Want of a Nail", visited 5/1/20)

For want of a swab the test was lost;

For want of a test the person was lost;

For want of a person the county was lost;

For want of a county...