TOLERANCE INTOLERANCE

silent sign by tj worthington


Again, ongoing problems with website. I write a sentence and the computer locks. I wait and wait, it starts again, I write a sentence and computer freezes again. I've learned that when it happens to stop and not force myself against it, because it turns into a cussing frenzy and makes me crazy. The only reason I've got this far is that it has stopped. When it starts I click on "send feedback" and tell the anonymous entity that sees the feedback the "interface" is not working again. Anonymous Entity never responds to questions. Wait a few hours and it's ok. I get so tired of that I think of letting this project go. I see in a baby a year and a half old a humorous version of my own behavior. She cannot figure something out, like screwing a cap onto a bottle, she tries until she sees she can't do it, puts it down and the thing is no longer of interest to her. She goes off to something else. That's how I do. It takes all my self-will to continue. Attempted to start writing a few minutes ago. I decided to go take a nap. Attempted it again after just a few minutes and it worked this time. Whatever.

An hour or so ago I saw an interview somebody had put on facebook of Colin Powell with Bill O'Reilly. I couldn't watch it all. Again, Powell was the easy target setting himself up for republican refudiation of his credibility pointing at his negritude on the air. Powell called O'Reilly on calling him an African American all the time. It didn't faze O'Reilly. Fact is, Powell is Jamaican by birth. Maybe he's an African Jamaican, or a Jamaican American, or in Powell's way of seeing it, an American. That won't do, however. It's not divisive enough. It doesn't separate him from the white audience. Of course, O'Reilly is seeing a nigger and Powell is playing through it. Sometimes I go to these odd videos from Faux News for comedy, to hear yo-yos O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, Coulter, Ingraham, and almost always turn it off before it's a third of the way into it. It is not easy for me to listen to that mind. It's not even glossed over. It's plain stupid. I wonder about what kind of morons they are. It doesn't seem rational to me that people would have a talking head job on tv and take such pride in ignorance and deception.I didn't realize such ignorant people could keep high-profile well-paying jobs. Sarah Palin, not the dumbest of them all, was put aside. This guy Paul Rand is showing himself to be a Sarah Palin wannabe. He's really bad off. It comes out his mouth every time he speaks. Like saying to Hilary Clinton at the "hearing," "if I were president, I'd fire you." I saw a clever meme on facebook that captioned Hilary saying, "I stopped listening when you said, if you were president."

I have a problem with calling people stupid and the frequency of its use in the time of online chat and name calling in comment boxes. In the first several times of my problems with the blogger website, I'd click on send feedback and wallow in the freedom to let whoever was reading feedback have it. Finally, I caught on that it was somebody at the other end doing the best that can be done attempting to take the kinks out of the program and make it a better experience instead of worse. I fell into that tendency with a computer to regard the anonymous person at the other end an asshole, moron, stupid, idiot, dork, words that are the most popular on the internet. I've stopped myself from using those words, except where there is no other word. I've come to see the use of these words an invalid attitude toward the unknown other. Of course, the reason the words are so abundant online is you don't know the person at the other end, both ways. Nobody is going to knock on your door and when you open it kick your ass. This is what we become when there are no repercussions to our actions. It's nothing to be proud of, but many are.

I've never heard conservatives define conservatism in a manner that satisfied me, nor have I heard any self-definition by liberals that satisfies what I see. I've finally found that both can be broken down to tolerance. The conservative agenda has to do with intolerance. The liberal agenda has to do with tolerance. Faux News is nothing but intolerance spewing round the clock. Intolerance is for all except ignorant white men. I suppose it is a good thing to have Faux News because it brings out the ignorance in the American white man belief system. White man has presented himself before as rational thinking and in charge. Since Limbaugh, you want to find out what white men are thinking, listen to him. He's paid $4,000,000 a year to be the voice of the white man. Before Limbaugh, these people did not have a voice. Now that they do have a voice, I'd like them to shut up. I'm glad I never fell for the comfort of ignorance among white men. This is only one of many reasons I embrace my self-created Outsider status.

I'm recalling someone I once knew who kept a sticker on his car's rear window that said TOLERANCE. I had to laugh every time I saw it. This is the most intolerant individual I have known. All I could figure was he put it there to remind himself of tolerance since he had so little. He was very tolerant where the latest cool thing to be tolerant about was somebody else's race or sexuality, indignantly tolerant. It's very close to indignant piety. The sticker's colors faded, it dried and curled up. Eventually it fell off after several years. Every time I saw it was a reminder of his intolerance. That he's tolerant of black people and gay people, doesn't mean he's tolerant of the people around him. They're just ideas. I've not found that he likes anyone in his world, that being the people of the county and the American people. He thinks of them like he thinks of me, too ignorant to bother with. After blowing his mind with LSD in the Sixties, he spends his life in superiority to everyone around him. He only looks down on others from way high up where you can see the curve of the earth. Not one is good enough to rate his attention. His wives have moved in, freaked out, and left, like frogs dropped into boiling water. After 30+ years of knowing him, I never saw his superiority bear out. It comes down to he is himself and everyone else is not. So he's got the goods on everybody.

Hearing him harangue on the ignorance of the people of this county left my mouth hanging open. He has lived here as long as I have. I don't see the mountain people like that at all. I've found the mountain people so incredibly intelligent they humble whatever intelligence I may have. The time he told me of his contempt for the mountain people, I wanted to say something to give him a new way to look at the people around him, but realized this was an expression of his attitude toward life, just like his absence of tolerance was his attitude toward life, as well. When I look at his intolerance of all but self, it bespeaks an ego so profound, evidently so overwhelming to him he worships it. He loves his ego. He's the only one that knows anything, wherever his, whoever he's among. He's always right and everybody else is always wrong. He told me he can only tolerate being among these ignorant mountain people nine months of the year, has to get away for three months to another part of the world where the people are not as ignorant as here. My tolerance of him dried up and fell away like the sticker on his car.

I've not seen him in over a year and don't want to see him or hear his voice again. I don't appreciate the people I know to be true human beings held for ignorant, incompetent and stupid. Those are words I'd use on him, but not any others I live among. I've tried for years to tolerate him, but a year ago something inside snapped. That day he was being especially contrarian at lunch and I called him on it. He got up and walked away and I thought: Wow! That was easy! I could have done that years ago! After a year of his absence from my life, it makes me joyous to think of the span of time getting longer every day. He'll never call me again and I'll never call him. In the past I had enjoyed his three month absences. It was never good to see him again. I've not seen his car in town so I'm guessing he's gone away to someplace in the rest of the world where he accords everybody there his intellectual equal. I've never let on, but I don't see his intellect anything to crow about, let alone be proud of. What he calls his intellect I call his ego. I don't even like to use his name anymore. I asked him once, just to be a bitch, if he put that sticker on his car window to remind himself of tolerance. No. He doesn't believe there is enough tolerance in the world. There's certainly none in his world.


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