The original script:
Many
of my friends and family are not actually my allies. I've come to
realize this. They claim to be good, and purchase pre-packaged good
to display proudly on their mantle; "military service"
this, "Lions club" that, "Salvation Army" the
other, all this quality-controlled, accountable goodness, without
stopping to wonder just how much it really matters. They just have
documented, quantified proof that they "did good", and, if
questioned, they wave it around like having done something in the
past grants them "good" status in perpetuity and they're
excused from any greater effort unless they're feeling magnanimous.
They don't need to seek good, question good, understand that evil
exists continuously and good must be enacted and propagated
continuously in return.
Words and deeds matter, but there is a balance... and we have lost that
balance: too many people insist they're good, pointing at the
trophies they've awarded each other as proof, and doing as little
else as possible. Worse, they do all this while damning those who
remind them that there's more good that needs doing, and laughing
while they do it.
In the last five days, Americans have gone out to live their daily lives
and encountered a whole new level of purely spiteful hate; women
reminded that they're objects, Hispanics and black people told to go
back to Mexico and Africa, Muslims threatened for their faith. It's a
new level of blatant bigotry on all fronts, because hate has been
validated by allowing the election of bigots and rapists that used
money and blanket media scare campaigns to intimidate youth and
minorities away from the polls and scare uninformed white people into
the polls. These people manipulated us all with media campaigns of
pure terror and no truth.
Good has lost. Evil has won, and on an unprecedented scale. This shows not
only because Trump and Pence won, not just because the Republicans
dominate the House, the Senate and, soon, the Supreme Court, but also
because the people I thought were good almost universally don't care.
They say they do, and wave their trophies around as proof, but then
stand idly by while children have to scrape and beg to eat and feed
each other in our schools, while police work side-by-side with
privately-owned militaries to commit acts of war, torture, and racial
and religious oppression in the name of private, corporate profit,
women are forced to bear children for a variety of abusive and
coercive predators and stripped of their right to decide whether they
want to or not, and self-proclaimed Christian activists subject
Muslims to a level of religious hatred and persecution that they,
themselves, have been taught to fear but have never actually
experienced.
Good isn't convenient, and it's not always placed on a flyer, a shelf, a
TV screen for your easy consumption to satisfy your sense of
well-being. Good requires vigilance, thought, concern, and genuine
effort, even if that effort is needed outside of business hours. Good
requires patience, tolerance, empathy, and understanding that
different is not automatically bad, rising above animal instinct to
act intelligently, using sentient reasoning and hoping for a better
world. It takes real comprehension of informed consent, and how
informed consent, for whatever purpose, requires education and cannot
be manipulated and coerced.
But many people I know, with their self-importance and their “done
good” trophies, their social circles all patting each other on the
back and shaking each others' hands, actually abuse this same system,
predating others to obtain the illusion of informed consent for their
own benefit and only apologizing if caught, after the profit or the
gain has been made... a radical, insidious and horrific abuse of the
axiom “it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.” In
fact, this is the position of the majority of America: capitalism,
not for humanity, as it should be, but at the cost of humanity.
I'm an Atheist, but I've read the Christian Bible twice in my life. The
first time, I was angry and wanted material to point at and be angry
at. The second time, I was looking for a message, for whatever it was
that people were so hung up on in this book as a whole. I actually
found a message, underneath all the dogma and the political editing
to give long-dead men “Divine Right”, and it was early on, when
the idea of the book as a collection of parables meant to teach
people good living by way of example wasn't quite completely bogged
down by centuries of politics and fearmongering. The heart of the
message was “be good.” Not “behave, and you can have the doggie
treat called Heaven”, not “behave, or I'll spank you with a lake
of fire for all eternity”, not “be good because an identifiable
incarnation of good asked you to in order to make it comprehensible
to peoples driven by self-interest”, but just “be good.”
Because good is an amazing thing to be.
Be good.
Jonny friggin' Panic
