Let’s all – as in A-L-L — us Jews and Christians and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus… and all the rest of us fellow pious hypocrites and atheists get something ramrod straighter than we would — even on Viagra:
Yes, the ultimate revenge may be forgiveness. And indeed that’s a fine and noble aspiration. But, meanwhile, revenge damn well calms the pain of betrayal. Deep in the groin of our souls it feels absolutely divine to win one back. And that’s what I call: Justice.
I really don’t care if we all go blind eye-by-eye. Most folks don’t see – or recognize — what’s happening right in front of their black and blue peepers, anyway. We don’t use our wondrous orbs as windows, but merely as mirrors to view our prejudices and other narcissistic mental masturbations.
What I am saying, simply, is that it’s far easier to forgive an enemy after you’ve gotten even with him. Or her! Or them!
Whoever! Whatever! Wherever!
The sumbitches need to resolutely fathom, first and foremost, just what duh hell you are forgiving them for. No pain, no gain…
And, as we all know, most of us are just too damn stoopid to comprehend much of anything above our genital tattoos. So make it hurt!
Hmm…
Aww… Go hmmm yourself!
Take Syria, for instance. We’re all contorted that al-Assad — against all humane international ‘legal’ treaties on the oxymoronic inhumanity of war – sarin-gassed about 1,500 helpless men, women and children.
But dissect that for a moment here: Isn’t dead, dead?
Is gas worse than mowing them all down with bullets, or bayonets, or clubs, or rocks…? You know, like our state militias did to those kids at Kent State and Jackson State protesting that duplicitous Vietnam War. Or, to Civil Rights marchers in Alabama. Or, in Chicago’s Haymarket. Or, to innocent women and children of striking miners in Ludlow, Colorado. Or to the Trail of Tears…
Aww… You get the gist of what I be talkin’ ‘bout.
And I am left to wonder about the greedy, venal, obfuscating business of justice and revenge. As far as I can figure: Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
Supposedly.
But does that make any sense? Because none of that mitigates the infamy of the notorious crime — that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And it seems that we can prevail to serve justice quickest by simply rendering justice to the other party – with an added dose of revenge for your high blood pressure.
Hmm….
Yet the real crime seems to rest in our over-priced courtrooms and legislatures with their transient and shifting rules of ‘legality’ ambushing our ‘imbalanced’ scales of common sense.
I know that neither revenge nor justice are a straight line; they’re a forest. But as a Jew (even one who has been loudly hallelujah-ing in a Baptist Church the last six years) I cannot condone genocide, or any injustice — no matter what side of the barbed-wire political fence it is being misconducted. No matter how big or how small. Whether in Rwanda. Or of the Armenians. Or in Serbia and Croatia. Or duh Congo…Or in Darfur…Or a single little girl in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan being shot in her public protest of being denied education.
Once again: Injustice anywhere…
If you’ve witnessed my August 20, 2013, column of coming to the late-night- street defense of a man being mugged by a couple of thugs for his bike, then you know the size of me. It was my typical and regular commitment of jumping into the fray to aid the helpless, oppressed and victimized. That is: Serving justice.
And I certainly ain’t no big guy. In fact compared to the rest of my long and tall family I am the most vertically challenged.
But if you think you are too little, or your voice is too tiny to matter in this world’s meshugga, vast sea of madness then try sleeping in a room with a mosquito.
Meanwhile, we in America do have a pretty justice-minded President with big, pious, domestic-policy balls. But with his equivocating foreign policy, those same balls appear to turn mealy in his mouth. Because, apparently, he doesn’t know how to put his money where his mouth is. And wasn’t he supposed to be some sort of legal professor of constitutional law – the very mouth of our country’s vast wealth?
Hmm…
If Obama wants America to be the moral vicar refereeing the world then: Just Do It!
Because, no matter what the hell we do, or don’t do – even nothing at all – it is going to have repercussions. Including a precipitous downside. Nonetheless, we all pay a price for everything and anything. Even nothing. I mean, isn’t that what we’re already paying for with our mis-representatives of government?
But what the hell, what the hell, what duh heck… A ref throws a flag and assesses a penalty. And if the player gets too ballsy his impudent behind gets smacked outta the game or slapped with a fine far more agonizing than watching his grandmother dance naked.
What’s the big deal? What is the purpose of being the so-called big, overpowering, righteous country (yeah, right…) if we don’t use the power of our big shtick?
Send in a slap-down-smack-down. Some jet fighters or missiles to bomb a couple of el-Assad’s concubine palaces. Like fly-swatting an annoying mosquito. Jack be nimble; Jack be quick. Get in, get down and get duh heck up and out.
But, of course! Don’t we do that already with our ‘DRONES?!’ Those surgical, tactical missionaries of death. They, too, would enable el-Assad to discern that we may not know much about his psychosis, or the 129 different sociopathic sects and rebel factions he is fighting, but we do know about the Queensbury Rules. And the rules stipulate: NO GAS, mother-f-er!
That’s it. The warning shots had already been fired with the President’s misspoken Red Line. Now, all trespassers are in our cross-hair. It’s a tactical strike. We jump in and get the heck out before Russia, or China, or Iran can even get their Botox mammaries caught in our hand-wringing.
Heck, they’ve got more annoying hot potatoes in their own houses to salt and pepper. They don’t have the luxury of time nor money to waste on more than oxygen. And that amounts to little more than denouncing us with a few, gruff diplomatic rebuffs at a pusillanimous UN that is about as futile as our Congress.
Hmm…Don’t I recall that Putin recently got divorced. It wasn’t a Stalin trial, was it? His wife wasn’t hung, was she? So now the former ‘good’ communist really understands capitalism: There’s nothing more acrimonious than alimony. He’s got his own wet sheets to dry.
And meanwhile, Obama doesn’t need to be shticking and kicking around with Congress. As President it’s: Follow me if I advance! Kill me if I retreat! Revenge me if I die!
As Commander-in-Chief, you don’t have to ask permission. You may have to seek forgiveness… that is, later. Much later. Just ask ‘W’. But if you do it right: Stand up; square your shoulders like a man; and shed a few remorseful, theatrical tears in public, you quickly find we are a nation of induced, soft-bowel movements. The American public is easily assuaged. It forgives most everything… except genius.
After all, even G-d forgives.
It’s His job!
It’s also good for His business.
Look, to get Shakespearean for a moment: If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?
There’s a time and place for everything. Love has its place, as does hate. Peace has its place, as does war. Mercy has its place, as do cruelty and revenge.
But to take revenge halfheartedly is to court disaster; either condemn or crown your hatred. Remember, there is no forgiveness in nature, only consequences. Also never forget: The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. And G-d made us fools to our weaknesses.
Nevertheless, one way or the other: Justice must always prevail. Otherwise it amounts to nothing but foolish revenge.
I guess I got on this forgiveness and revenge kick because this past week was the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It was when Egypt, Syria and most of the Arab world loaded up their tanks and staged a surprise party.
They came crashing in, attacking on Israel’s and the world’s Jewry holiest day of the year. It’s the Day of Atonement when all Jews are commanded to seek forgiveness from the people we have hurt. In other words, it’s the weekly Catholic confessional all in one 24-hour day.
As evangelist Billy Graham described the High Holy Day: It is when the Jewish community reminds us all of our need for repentance and forgiveness.
But back 40 years ago, Israel’s back was more than just against the Wailing Wall. It was gloom. And pending doom for the then 25-year-old country. Men, women and children were fighting for their past and future. In fact, all of our past and future – including the Christian and Protestant world. Nearly a thousand Israeli soldiers would soon be dead.
Israel was trapped until the former Israeli statesman and commanding General, Ariel Sharon, made one of the most brilliant military moves of most any military history.
A past paratrooper himself he retaliated with the best defense — a grand juggernaut offense. He had thousands of paratroopers and heavy weaponry drop in behind the enemy’s tank lines. He encircled the attacking forces with Israel’s defending army, the Israeli paratroopers and the Suez Canal. And from the jaws of defeat the David’s of Israel finally forced the Goliath’s of the Arab world to scream ‘Uncle!’ before the UN — which came to their pathetic rescue.
Oy-vey!
What it demonstrates is that when you’ve got your enemy by the balls, his heart and mind do, indeed, start paying detailed attention to the immediate past, the discomfiting present and what’s soon-to-come in the fist of consequences.
It just makes plain and simple common sense.
And so let it be with Syria. Few of us understand its tribal ‘uncivil’ war. Just as few of them cared to understand America’s most ‘uncivil’ war. Or Russia’s. Or China’s.
When it comes to any war – there is more than a tad of incivility. It demonstrates that if there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
A bully doesn’t grasp love and kindness. Only power, force and obstreperous defiance. The ‘medulla oblongata’ of a tormenter, a thug, a Philistine only comprehends the power of might. And whether might makes right, or vice-versa, this is no time for a coffee house debate. It is time for both justice and a measured revenge.
And to be bluntly forthright: I do not bring forgiveness with me, nor forgetfulness. The only ones who can forgive are dead; the living have no right to forget. A mistake may sometimes be ‘forgivable’, but rarely excusable and always unacceptable.
But when it comes to Syria, make no mistake about it: Any civilization has the same fragility as a life. So let them fight. Shed their blood. Like Jefferson said: The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is natural manure.
Our righteous job is to make sure the manure of revenge doesn’t get sarin-gassed and nuclear. That justice is served. That it’s a fair fight… as fair as fair can be in this meshugga world… And that’s about all.
And dats yDrewIS on dis penal colony…
ydrewis.wordpress.com 