Holy crap! Where do I begin?

This will be like walking through a field of human eggshells. The chances of offending someone are at least 100%. I’ll probably even offend myself. This is long so if you think you’ll need the bathroom; now is the time to go.

ENTITLEMENTS:

1) LIFE.

With exceptions, individuals are entitled to the basics required to survive. This entitlement may be waived through acts of heinous crime and war.

Infants, very young children the incapable and the elderly are entitled to survive and to basic respect.

People are entitled to critical life-saving healthcare.

2) LIBERTY.

People are entitled to defend themselves, their loved ones or any other person/people they deem to be innocent(s) from death or great bodily harm with at least the minimum force necessary to disable the threat.

People are entitled to retain their legal property  with the minimum force required to accomplish that mission.

Children are entitled to be educated.

People who do their best to abide by the “Golden Rule” are entitled to earned respect.

People are entitled to offer and provide charity.

Charitable people are entitled to gratitude.

Grieving people are entitled to sympathy.

Victims of criminal abuse are entitled to  justice.

Criminals are entitled to justice.

People are entitled to succeed according to their own efforts and abilities.

People are entitled to fail according to their own efforts and abilities.

People are entitled to complain and to peacefully demonstrate.

3) PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

People are entitled to ask for and accept assistance and aid toward  self sufficiency.

NON-ENTITLEMENT:

ABLE PEOPLE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO “SOMETHING-FOR-NOTHING”.

ABLE PEOPLE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO HAVE OTHERS PAY THEIR WAY.

1. LIFE.

People are not entitled to non-critical lifesaving healthcare.

2) LIBERTY.

*Politicians are not entitled to represent the wills of any people other than his/her electoral constituency while holding elected office.

Honorable people are not entitled to disrespect.

The poor are not entitled to dismiss or demonize the rich.

The rich are not entitled to dismiss or demonize the poor.

People are not entitled to riot or act with physical violence.

People are not entitled to illegally damage property through arson, graffiti or in other ways whether as a form of protest or any other illegal purpose(s).

Criminals waive liberty until justice has been satisfied.

Adults (whether legitimately angry over something or not), who behave in dishonorable ways are not entitled to respect.

PURUIT OF HAPPINESS.

People are not entitled to charity.

Able people are not entitled to be purposely non-self sufficient.

People are not entitled to public funded higher education.

People are not inherently entitled to aid and assistance.

People are not entitled to entertainment.

Aside from life-saving or life-sustaining medical devices, people are not entitled to technology, ( ie. : TV, radio, telephones, cell phones, computers, i-pads and notebooks, etc.)

Candy, soda-pop, Starbuck’s, or restaurant/fast food fare are not considered basic life sustaining nutritional requirements and , thus, are not entitlements, ever.

People are not entitled to tattoos.

IMPORTANT NOTES.

!)There are many people who honestly need assistance from the government in order to survive. This is indisputable. We, The People, will always provide this type of existential aid.

2) “Government entitlements” is a misnomer. Handouts of public funds and assistance generally provide recipients reasons to remain non-self sufficient. This has proven true for generations. Politicians use these programs in the ancient form of “Cake and Circus”. The idea behind this is that if they feed and entertain the masses; they own them. It works at the ballot boxes!

3) The government cannot be charitable. It fails the “gratitude test”. When a person receives charity from a private party, church, or other non-tax related source through voluntary contributions, they are grateful. When able people receive governmental assistance, many rarely feel it is as much as they are ENTITLED to.

I look forward to your comments.

RESPECT is a curious and complex concept differentiated from PRIDE  in various ways. It is also different from the many concepts of ENTITLEMENT, except as defined under BASIC RESPECT (below). Whereas PRIDE is a cut-and-dried subjective form of thought, RESPECT is multidirectional with numerous crossroads.

BASIC RESPECT  is that to which an unborn, newborn and any other innocent person incapable of deciding things on their own is ENTITLED. This RESPECT includes our acknowledgement of basic life sustaining needs, (nutrition, hydration, shelter from the elements, defense from physical dangers). This, like PRIDE, cannot be rationally argued.

FUNCTIONAL RESPECT is a sticking point for many individuals. It is a two-way street with multiple levels and an untold number of potentially dangerous intersections. It involves the ways we feel we should be perceived and treated; as well as how we feel we should treat others. This varies culture by culture within countries, states , religions, tribes, kindred groups, organizations, etc. FUNCTIONAL RESPECT, being something “functional” is subject to “malfunction” (break-down), if it is abused, violated or neglected and could diminish or die. Reestablishing it, if at all possible, always requires far more effort than maintaining it in the first place . FUNCTIONAL RESPECT should grow and mature over time, along with the individual or entity.

NOTE: FEAR is not RESPECT in any of RESPECT’S manifestations; although they are often  mistaken for each other. For example: I think Polar Bears are great, but I wouldn’t go walking up to one for a hug. Not because I’m afraid of the bear. I wouldn’t walk up to the bear for two existential reasons: #1) I have no reason to want to kill the animal. #2) I’m not an idiot.

SELF RESPECT, while it only deals with one person, it is still a two way street, inasmuch as it requires objectivity. In other words, it requires one to step outside himself/herself in order to make an assessment of ones’ self as others may perceive him/her.

I shall endeavor to clarify my understanding of this issue by simplifying it via examples. Pay attention. There will be a quiz afterwards. Those who pass will be treated to cookies and exotic dancing (assuming they can dance).

To begin: The “Golden Rule”, has always been well accepted among human-kind to be a good and effective way of keeping our ourselves off the list of extinct species. This rule is often bent or broken (sometimes to a greater or lesser degree); but always to everyone’s misfortune. Those who abide most closely by it naturally garner the most RESPECT. They are entitled to feel the sense of PRIDE. Ignorance or violation of the “Golden Rule” is the main cause of conflict. ISIS (ISIL, Daesh), is a perfect example of a group of individuals who are each doomed to early extinction  for universally ignoring the “Golden Rule”, although there are those within the group who feel a faux sense of PRIDE in performing atrocities they believe are for the greater good. This is a very specialized group; and, as with most specialized creatures, they are unadaptable, thus,  extinction is just around the corner. This is just one of many cases where FEAR arrogantly poses as RESPECT. Hitler and my 5th grade teacher were masters of this.

There is no BASIC RESPECT given or due in situations of abortion, child abuse, elder abuse or the abuse of any individual incapable of defending himself/herself because these forms of egocentric behaviors fly directly in the face of the “Golden Rule”.

There is no FUNCTIONAL RESPECT in cases of crime, prevarication, chicanery,  conniving/conspiracy,  heartlessness, narcissism/egoism.  People who think they feel PRIDE when displaying these behaviors are probably just feeling the bloat of flatulence.

Honesty, trustworthiness, charity, empathy/sympathy, and valor are the building blocks of FUNCTIONAL RESPECT. The genesis of PRIDE.

Ironically, SELF RESPECT derives from how well we treat others. Go figure.

STAY TUNED. NEXT UP: ENTITLEMENT.

Please allow me to ask you a few questions. I wonder what your answers to yourself might be. I will answer the questions for myself as I go along.

Are you proud you were born? (No.)

Are you proud you were born with a mental and/or physical disability? (No.)

Are you proud you were born without a mental and/or physical disability? (No.)

Are you proud of your gender? (No.)

Are you proud you were born of a certain race? (No.)

Are you proud you were born with any other innate quality? (No.)

Are you proud you derive from ancestors who once lived in a certain country or were of a particular culture? (No.)

Would you feel pride if your aunt left you a fortune in her will.  (No.)

Would you feel pride in having been struck by lightning? (No.)

None of these things would make me proud because they were things over which I had no  choice nor influence. They simply happened to me; leaving me either victim or beneficiary. To claim pride in any of them would be akin to taking personal credit for the paths the planets travel as they orbit the sun. This would not be something to RESPECT.

PRIDE derives from personal accomplishments. They are its foundation. The choices we make, the efforts we and/or others put forth are the only rational sources of PRIDE.

NEXT UP: RESPECT (with references to PRIDE).

I hold the old notion that it is better to free ten guilty men than to incarcerate one innocent man. I also hold the notion that a man is entitled to punishment for his crimes.

It is wrong to assume a man is guilty due to the color of his skin. It is also wrong to assume a man is innocent due to the color of his skin. The color of a man’s skin shouldn’t matter at all.

But I have a question.

If there were no such thing as racial profiling. If there were no such thing as unequal treatment under the law. Would the percentage of incarcerated black men equal their percentage of the general population? In other words, if black people make up, say 15% of the population, would they make up 15% of the prisons’ populations if whites weren’t guilty of racist behaviors? I would ask the same about Hispanics.

Is white racism the overwhelming reason for such large racial disparities in prison populations or might there be racial disparity in criminal behavior going on?

What would the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  think of my question? What would his answer be? We’ll never know.

I wonder about things like that.

Subsequent to 66 year old Bellville, Illinois gunman, James T. Hodgkin’s attack against Republican Congressional lawmakers and their staffs at a baseball batting practice session in Virginia on Wednesday, June 14th around 7 a.m., MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell saw fit to laud officers of the Capitol police, who, along with Alexandria P.D. engaged the gunman at the scene. He was effusive in his praise of the officers (two of whom were injured in the melee) , who did their sworn duties, rather than choosing to hide or run away. It is unsurprising Lawrence would find this behavior remarkable. He and so many other like-minded, invertebrate Liberals are always in awe of  a human trait nonexistent  in the Progressive community, among whom the belief is held that protesting, bitching, conspiring and complaining are acceptable substitutes for the honorable and more conservative tenet of valor.

The “Left” appreciates bravery from afar. They see it as something to be applauded, but not embraced or promoted within their own ranks or constituencies, because it requires self-determination and, (to use a mainstream media favorite term), it’s “scary”.

After some thought, I believe I’ve boiled the problem with politics down to a concentrate easy to understand. Politicians’ main problem lies in the field of basic arithmetic. The logic found in addition and subtraction, to be precise.

One plus one always equals two and there isn’t anything you can do about it no matter how hard you try or how many people you might convince otherwise. Politicians won’t accept that simple fact in its many forms and disguises. This is why they are so often astounded by the obvious.

The California Senate just passed a single-payer health care bill. It must now clear both the Senate and the Assembly by a two-thirds vote. If it does, private health insurance in California will become a thing of the past. This would seem strange in almost any other state.

Last November, Californians voted to make recreational marijuana legal. I don’t know how many people voted for this, but it was a majority. I’m not sure how many people were interested in the bill’s passage, but they got to vote on it. It was a choice offered in the general election because it impacted a minority of the population and other than bringing in a few more tax dollars to mismanage, it wouldn’t change anything. Health insurance impacts the vast majority of the population; therefore, the politicians know they must decide this on their own because they are aware Californians are too stupid to be trusted with such a monumental decision.

I agree.

After all, we are talking about the same Californians who elected these blithering idiots.

The  politics of trying to dethrone Trump have gotten boring. Until someone actually pins something on the guy, it’s simply business as usual. Maybe it’s time to switch rails and delve into something deeper and more meaningful, such as: Why are there so few attractive feet?

I mean, come on! How often do you see a foot (much less a pair of feet) that makes you think, “Gee, I wish I had feet like that.”? Not often, I’ll bet.

Let’s discuss the pros and cons of different types of feet. In the process, let’s avoid issues of too many or too few toes. But, as to toes, there are myriad types. Those with so many joints, they can curl up like a pangolin. Those that are so short they don’t touch the ground, even when one is lying prone during a traffic stop. Those that are spaced apart enough where another additional set could be hammered in between the existing ones. Great toes (why do the call them “great”?), which resemble boat oars or crullers. Pinkie toes that are nothing more than a tiny nail crazy glued to the side of the foot. Also, why is it that pinkie toes, if they are visible, all grow at an angle; as though they’re intent on escape? And what about the toes that are not graduated in size? What happens when the toe adjacent to the pinkie toe is twice the length of all the others, combined? That’s when I make use of my cellular phone’s camera.

Heels. Ah. now there’s a subject for study. Some heels are rather slender compared to the rest of the foot. Some are bulbous. Some look like a flat tire. The the type of heel which extends some distance to the rear makes it look like you could fit another foot into a high heel. They also tend to squash the backs of sneakers.

Arches and soles. Flat feet are neat because a person gifted with them can kill a spider with any part of their sole. High arches are neat because some people like spiders. Medium arches, aside from being the most comfortable, are also the most common and, thus, don’t fetch a high price at market.

Almost all feet have at least one peculiarity. That’s why God invented shoes.