Category Archives: ethics

The Comb Over (Part 2)

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Yes blessed friends I’m back.  And better than ever.  It is my sad duty to have to exercise my First Amendment Rights as an American in order to inform you that The Comb Over is Adolf Hitler with orange hair.  45th President of the United States.  If there ever was a sign of the decline of western civilization Donald Trump is it.  I told you the parallels were eerie: a leader treated by the political and media establishment as a buffoon, a dimwit outsider and an “it can’t happen here,” lazy intellectual attitude on the part of an ignorant electorate due to a shabby school system kidnapped by Tea Party Christian Right Wing White Republicans in favor of charter, voucher, home school, and just plain minimal investment in the education of our future (our children).  Then there is the Big Lie.  Then there is the manipulation of liberal democracy by Billionaires and the Soviet Union, er, I mean Russia.  I will prove to you in these bitter pages that to vote for a Republican now is to vote for the Nazi Party, Der Fuhrer.  Wait and see.  It will all become crystal clear.

Where to start?  Maybe at the end.  The separation and caging of refugee children was the last straw.  Where was the last place we saw families divided and sent off to “detention” camps when they came to a new country?  Do I have to spell it out for you?  You watch the History Channel, right?  My father fought to liberate people from concentration camps.  Almost died in The Battle of the Bulge.  Am I gonna sit here and watch the same thing happen to the Red, White, and Blue?  I’m disgusted, appalled.  Crying children.  My country?  Cages.  I’m ashamed to call myself American.

ICE.  Jack-booted storm troopers.  Sometimes you just walk away from your job because it is too repulsive, inhumane.  You say “I won’t be a part of this.”  Patriots just doing their jobs?  So were the SS men in Dachau.  Study the banality of evil.  They say they’ll use DNA to match the right children with their families.  What’s that about?  Like parents won’t recognize their own children?  Why do we need to match DNA?  If this doesn’t sound creepy to you, you aren’t paying attention.

How many times have you heard someone ask “if you were back in Nazi Germany would you have participated in the Holocaust?”  The answer is inevitably, “No I would have resisted.”  Liars, every one of you.

The time for conversation is over.  There is no such thing as “good people on both sides” when the Confederate flag is displayed.  How would you feel if they put up a statue honoring Erwin Rommel and you were Jewish?  Stone Mountain, Georgia.  How does an African American feel about that monument?

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On today’s menu is Scott Pruitt Gauleiter of the Environmental Protection Agency.  He resigns after disemboweling 50 years of environmental protection for the planet.  Talk about putting the fox in the hen house.  A lifestyle considered lavish even by Imperial Roman standards on my/your dime while you scrabble to get health insurance, he resigns not in shame, but in having done a “good” job.  I’m sure there is a CEO/Lobbyist job he doesn’t need waiting for him in the Energy Sector somewhere.  Probably the Koch brothers.  Who knows.  Presidential Pardon.

Enough for today.  I’ll get back to you tomorrow.  I have so much more to say….

Charity

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bike injuryOne of my pet peeves is people who engage in their beloved hobby “for charity” and take credit for somehow being a better person than the rest of us. The worst offenders are runners, bicyclists, bowlers, motorcyclists, and especially golfers. They line up donations for how many miles they go or just finishing the event. Of course nobody ever checks to see that the person actually finished the race or didn’t pocket the donations. However I do believe most of these people are on the up and up so outright embezzlement of the funds or cheating is probably low.

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Musicians “Giving Back”

I liken this somewhat to rock stars and their ilk who give concerts where the proceeds go to some supposedly worthy organization and get accolades for “giving back.” Most of these leeches and debaucher’s are multi-millionaires who if they really wanted to give back would carve a million or so of their filthy lucre off for the charity. The concept that playing a guitar for 90 minutes without getting paid is giving back somehow is ludicrous. Most of these guys and gals who couldn’t hold down a real job if their lives depended on it don’t deserve to be paid anyway.

Home Team Charity Run logoAnyway back to the main subject. These so-called charity hobbyists have to presumably present some entrance fee. Corporations tend to jump on the bandwagon and sponsor these deals with everything from the charity itself to all the setup and production and things like bottled water, etc. Now when you get to the end of the line here just how much of all this money that is spent is actually getting to the charity? Wouldn’t it be better to have no event at all and have all the expense and corporate “support” dollars go directly to the charity and have the cyclists go off to the park to indulge in their hobby by themselves or with their buddies? Let’s face it these people are “giving” nothing. They are getting paid and donating the proceeds to their favorite charity for indulging in their fitness hobby, something they would have done anyway. If these folks were truly giving up their time they would be down at the soup kitchen slingin’ soup instead of wasting time riding around on their bikes or running in a 10K. In fact they might just work for a day at their job and donate that day’s pay to charity. Then they can just go jogging like usual or run in a regular marathon race.

Now why can’t I get the same deal, say for reading a certain number of books or winning a beer drinking contest?

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Ping-Pong Charity Pool Party

So I don’t sponsor any of these yokels. I give plenty of dough out to charity but I’m not going to do it for you to go out and play ping-pong or poker so I sure won’t do it for anyone else’s hobby. Let’s just pony up for breast cancer or whatever and feel better about that and get on with our lives without pretending we’re giving any of our time to anyone in the process. Oh, and see if you can wheedle the same amount out of the corporate sponsors that they would have spent in event expenses. Bet you can’t because how are they going to get their logo on your t-shirt or some banners along the race course? They’re just buying advertising and not “giving” anything either.

Ethics

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Robert Dunbar is a really good writer.  Most people would categorize his writing as horror but he would chafe a bit at that.  He is a genre bender and his prose is on the literary side along a sort of Hemingway path.  Good Stuff.  I think his novel Willy is brilliant.  I liken it to A Catcher in the Rye. His short story collection Martyrs and Monsters is excellent. Buy it. Buy both of them right now, you won’t regret it. I own all of his books.

Now I come to the theme of my present post. Mr. Dunbar and I have had a little disagreement, let’s call it a matter of ethics. Nothing illegal going on here, let’s get that straight also. Mr. Dunbar is a moderator for a little group called Literary Darkness on the ego-driven biblio-social network GoodReads, which is now owned by Amazon I might add. Now this group has a monthly book reading. The group sort of nominates a book and we sort of vote on it and read it and discuss it that month. Kinda cool for a swell-head like me. Some time ago the group read Dunbar’s story collection Martyrs and Monsters. Well and fine. This month the chattering in the monthly reading thread was trending towards picking another of Dunbar’s books, a brilliant novel entitled Willy.

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There is a little “cult of personality” going on in this group as well. Robert doesn’t encourage it but he doesn’t discourage it either. He’s a big time, okay not Stephen King big, but bigger than all of us are, writer and pretty good. It’s not his fault that the masses don’t go for class. But on the other side intelligent members of this group do fawn just a bit at Mr. Dunbar’s feet. He’s polite, responsive, a good moderator, and answers all queries which is a big deal to fans of a real talented writer.

Well your’s truly starts to smell something fishy in Denmark. I jump into the thread and say Robert’s a good guy and his books are good and all, but doesn’t it seem a little funny that another of Dunbar’s books (he only has 7) is coming up in this group as a monthly read. Now I don’t accuse Robert of priming this at all. He’s not pumping it. But he also is not politely bowing out. See where I’m going?

There are well over a thousand people in this reading group. It is not called Robert Dunbar’s Reading Group, it is called Literary Darkness. A group called Robert Dunbar’s Reading Group should read Mr. Dunbar’s books just like the Robert McCammon group reads all of Robert McCammon’s books. See I’m from Chicago and a big fan of calling a spade a spade and not messing around. No hidden agendas here.

Well, Dunbar deletes my post. It’s gone. Pfffft. He doesn’t tell me in the group or privately that he has done this evil thing. I notice it when I go back to the thread to see the new posts. It’s just gone. Now you know me, I never get excited. Mr. Dunbar and I have a terse private exchange of messages when I call him out, also in private. I ask what’s the deal? He basically says that the group has been clamoring for this for two years. So what, that is not the point. Taking the high road when both the high and low are offered is the point. Are we getting anywhere? There is also an intimation, no, more than an intimation, that yours truly is a little too negative. Hmmm. So the world of literary criticism and discussion is supposed to be fairies and rainbows (see below) especially when it comes to Mr. Dunbar’s creations?

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If this goes down, as I think it will, and it will, it will (how much wood woulda woodchuck chuck..?) just be too bad. I don’t have any heroes anymore but I would expect an intelligent and talented person who certainly appears to not be a hypocrite to take the high road when it is offered. Start a separate group to discuss Dunbar’s books. Start a “Buddy Read” with the author as moderator on the side, but don’t intentionally or unintentionally hijack the whole Literary Darkness group monthly read when it smells of merchandising and not literary criticism.