Tag Archives: Russians

Common Ground

Common ground: (n) a basis of mutual interest or agreement.

I do believe the quote is attributed to Sting, lead singer of “The Police.”

When explaining his tour into the Soviet Union, in one of his lyrics he offered the conclusion that “Russians love their children, too.”

It is so easy to sit on the precipice of destruction and discuss, like naughty brats, how much more our destructive weapons could kill your people than yours could destroy ours.

But in the long run, or in the short time it takes for a bomb to explode, people are dead–and most all of them look somewhat like us.

Anything that comes along to encourage the destruction of the planet, the deception of racism, the alienation of the genders or the false pride of a culture is the feeding frenzy for us pursuing the insanity of gobbling one another up in our social cannibalism.

Every single day, in every single way, in every single building where decisions are made about human life, three things have to be honored:

  1. Flesh may have color, but it is all basically the same.
  2. If people were created, they have one Father.
  3. We have not perfected a way to snatch life from death.

Slow down.

This is called common ground.

Everything else is just a silly argument among children about who can jump the highest, and who owns the shiniest bike.

 

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Antebellum

dictionary with letter A

Antebellum: Occurring before the American Civil War.

The root word of culture is cult.

Isn’t it amazing that even though we abhor cults for their short-sighted, selfish and often abusive treatment of their members and the world around them, we accept the elongated version of this condition as being a symbol of race, nationality, creed or honor.

I hate culture.

I despise anything that tries to separate us into smaller and smaller units so we can hide behind our forts and peer at one another in horror and disbelief.

Never was this any more evident than in the years just prior to the Civil War. We became convinced that a country which had united itself around principles could still be divided by opinions. It allowed for the pernicious concept of slavery to continue under the guise of maintaining allegiance to a lifestyle which had already proven to be fiscally irresponsible and morally reprehensible.

I have to admit that I become nauseous when portions of that thinking and relics from that era–when men were oppressing other men over a bale of cotton–rise up with a bit of whimsy and patriotism to symbolize a deep-rooted respect for what can only be determined to be our national holocaust.

Yes, somewhere along the line, every bit of “culture” has to be measured against ethics, humanity and spirituality, and if it’s found to be lacking, it needs to be abandoned for the common good.

The minute you think something good transpired in the Old South and you unfurl the Stars and Bars, you are also welcoming into the equation a tribute to the industry and ideals that subjugated a race of people.

Certainly there’s plenty wrong with the North, East and West of our nation that needs to be scrutinized. Those living west of the Mississippi are truly the descendants of a lineage which lied to and cheated the American Indian. The prejudice against Italians, Irish, Russians and all immigrants into the country through Ellis Island in New York is also shocking.

But honestly, I don’t see anyone tributing George Armstrong Custer, and those who are so short-sighted that they rejected every nationality that came to our borders are considered, in the history books, to be numbskulls.

Yet for some reason we allow our South to regale its Confederate heroes.

My only statement is that I will not participate in anything that’s antebellum.

Because quite candidly, I am anti-bellum.

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