BULLYING THE BULLY?

November 26, 2016

Who is the bigger jerk? The guy who wants to stand up to a bully or the bully? In minor FB dustups it's easy to get carried away and one up folks who are semi-literate or just angry .. often they are both. 

We are in a desperate time.  It's really uncomfortable: icky to say the least.   In a nutshell, some poor old guy who is a friend of a friend dropped out of school in the eighth grade and his grammar was lacking in advocating for standing up to a misdirected bully in a recent airline incident.  The old guy advocated for confronting a bully (who may have been drunk?) who made disparaging remarks about the election, taunting Hillary supporters on the plane.  Evidently, the loud mouth was removed from the plane but then returned.  I advocate for free speech, but the old line about shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater may be a good analogy here.  The old guy on FB was all for confronting this bully and I basically allowed that you have no idea how drunk or crazy a person like this might be, it's wise to leave it to the people in charge.  I tried to shame the old guy for his bad grammar and got his dander up!  It's just not nice to do that but I won't make an apology. In fact I just blocked the old guy and let it go after he was really upset: calling names and acting like a republicant.  My last retort was for him to look into a mirror and deal with what he saw.  That's not nice either.  

///

I have the TV set on for company these mornings and notice that commercials for college football include highly violent games like Call to Duty.  I wonder how much influence this stuff has on kids?  A friend used to say that he thought it made no difference, but I'm not so sure.  The 'bad guys' get blown to smithereens.  Do these games use realistic fire arms that point at the monitor?  There is a certain thrill for blowing things up, for sure.   I played 'guns' with a realistic six shooter with a Texas Longhorn on the plastic grip.  I practiced my quick draw and could fan it like Johnny Mack Brown, but have never wanted to really shoot anyone.  So.. I know and knew the difference.  Do gun nuts really want to blow 'enemies' away?  Evidently, if the story of a Black Friday murder over a parking space is going on. 

Years ago I wrote a program (the text.. not an actual computer program!!) for a pre-computer type computer game that Mattel was doing.  It was called the Touch Learning Center (TLC!).  The game they asked me to write was a submarine scenario with the subs destroying enemy battleships, I think.  I asked the coordinator at Mattel is we could not kill people by changing the game to Mine Sweeper.  The danger is still there but we would be saving lives instead of destroying them.   Mattel bought the idea!  I used to go into KayBee Toys and put that game in front of the display and wonder if playing my game instead of an aggressive 'kill the enemy' game saved one kid from joining the military or even going on in life to make some kind of peace?  

The guy I don't know on FB will stew in his own juices and the whole exchange is gone by my hand. The mutual FB friend is someone by whom I feel mostly dismissed anyway.  Funny how that happens. 

Is rain on the way?  Remember when the rhubarb used to grow wild along the wire fences that kept your chickens out of the neighbor's yard? 

November 26, 2016

michaelsheehan

Chayote 11/26/2016