Angels and Assholes: Absurdities #1
/Eventually most of us realize there’s generally two sides to most every story. Take the police culture and Black Lives Matter culture. Some a-holes on both sides. Get an a-hole involved and there’s fireworks. There’s news. There’s protests. In some cases it’s absurd. I’m starting 2016 poking at some, what I consider, absurdities.
Absurd: ‘Ridiculously incongruous or unreasonable.’ A case could be made that two sides may not exist in absurdity. When something is wrong to the point of absurdity, change screams out “I’m needed.” A few unattractive examples:
- Interpreting ‘holy’ to mean we need to kill everybody to bring on the apocalypse. Really?
- Making a profit selling a product and making another profit when it falls apart. Seems absurd to me.
- More U.S. troops in Afghanistan dying by suicide than combat. Sad and absurd.
- Thousands of ‘Rape Kits’ never even looked at. After what a woman has to go through to own that rape kit!? Absurd? I hope you think so. They can spin it any way they want, I don’t see another side. Every rape kit gets looked at. Period.
- More people killed in one week in Baltimore than an entire year in Canada. Holy crap! Somethin’s so wrong there, wouldn’t you say it’s absurd? Of course we can’t just blame Baltimore. It’s urban culture: the murder rate in the U.S. is 20 times the global average.
- I’ll end on an almost humorous absurdity: the ‘affluenza’ defense. Entitlement (in other words -- being an a-hole) excusing a serious crime? Oh, really?
As I’ve said: the purpose of ‘Angels and Assholes’ is to point out a need for social justice and change, as well as relishing human acts of kindness. Issues with two sides can be argued interminably, as you may have noticed in our political arena. A true absurdity has only one side and thus it’s absurd if changes that are obviously needed can’t be made. I’ll be talking about a few of these in depth in the future.
If you have a good absurdity, please comment.
Thank you, Tim
