Kids in cowboy hats

This man of few words - but what he does with those few - even makes the boys from Liverpool go down smoother.



But you gotta admit. Tykes in cowboy hats make everything go better.



Sing it, kids.

Why kids still believe

You know why kids still believe, more than adults, so often, that life and the world can be better than it is, I think?

Because when kids are bullied or bully one another, they know that it's wrong.

But when adults bully one another, they call it whatever they please.

What Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and all the rest of us are deciding, right now, is:

"Is that really how we want it to be?"

Perhaps we can do a bit better

It's so funny watching this stupid, petty, godforesaken mess of humanity, these days. How much they try to get their hands on power and take credit for progress that generally happens despite them, more often than not, sadly. Stupidly. But sadly, still.

It's so funny to watch all the ego masquerading as something better than itself. All so it doesn't have to face it's own shittiness.

My own, too, of course. I've been guilty more times than I can count, honestly. Everyone has, is the truth. When we're not bullshitting. It's those who can't face that truth that you really need to be concerned about, honestly. Fred Phelps comes to mind. So does Kim Jong Il. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And that Chinese government. And the broadest swath of American politicians, these days. And most days, is the truth.

There are signs of hope. A Tunisian public that knows real oppression well enough to know that freedom isn't a four letter word. And Egyptians and Yemenis and Jordanians who know better than to wait on petty, sniping Americans to come save them. Even as Iraqis and Afghanis benefit from the half-ass bumbling of an American government and public too stupid and scared to just embrace the very cause they lost lives for in those conflicts. Many American soldiers, I've noticed, are not so stupid and scared, to embrace the freedom they fight for. A lot of teachers and firefighters and other such folk, too, I've noticed. A lot of cops seem to prefer more freedom for people, is my experience. But so few of us, today, seem willing to say so out loud.

For fear that the world will go to shit, if we do. I mean, far more shitty than we've already made it, of course. The fear that always rationalizes our worst instincts. Because we are far too shitty to ever stop imagining just how much far more shitty we could possibly be.

How stupid and mean and self-centered are we, you wonder? As stupid and mean and self-centered as we wanna be, is the truth. And, from there, springs all our problems, of course.

I guess I've decided that a humanity that behaves that way deserves its own misery, is the truth. Until they can face up to what jackasses they are. That's the only way I've ever learned, at least.

Perhaps we are more enamoured of our pride. But pride has consequences. Enjoy them, I suppose.

If humanity can't embrace it's better angels because it's too afraid of its own demons, it deserves the hell on earth it creates, I suppose.

Until it has the courage to embrace something better.

And no matter how many ways you talk your way around that one, that is the only courage that has ever been worthy of the name. Everything else, no matter how we talk ourselves around it, is the consequence of the alternative.

And everything else is what we get until we find that courage.

The only way around it is to put down the threats and the will to overpower and to be decent to one another.

But that will only happen when we find the courage to do just that.

Hitler and Stalin, as it turns out, were not so different from us as we flatter ourselves to believe, is the truth. They just were more committed to the logical endpoint of this very same reasoning.

They went to greater extremes, you might say. They were more radical. They were more consistent in their principles, as modern day would-be Stalins and Hitlers, on the right and the left, might say.

And that makes us so much better, let me tell ya.

Or perhaps it makes us not quite as shitty.

Either way, the way forward should clearly be in the other direction. When we aren't rationalizing our inner Hitlers and Stalins.

Humanity sets up the impossible task that all its members must be Jesus for them to stop falling short of Hitler and Stalin. And then spends the rest of its existence justifying why they just can't be that dude in their own lifetimes.

And makes a mess of itself in the meantime.

What a stupid way to run a species, don't you think?

Perhaps its the only way to run a species.

Or perhaps that's just one more line of bullshit in a long succession of bullshit.

Perhaps the reason we don't do better is because we're afraid of ourselves. And one another.

Perhaps we can do a bit better than that.

What do you do for a species too stubborn to listen?

Sometimes, all you can do for humanity is just let them all fall on their own swords.