Why We Do What We Do

From the ending of Sydney Pollack's 1975 movie Three Days of the Condor:

TURNER:
Jesus, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same as not telling the truth.

HIGGINS:
It's simple economics, Turner. There's no argument. Oil now. Ten or fifteen years it'll be food or plutonium. Maybe sooner than that. What do you think the people will want us to do then?

TURNER:
Ask them!

HIGGINS:
Now? (shakes head) Huh-uh. Ask them when they're running out. When it's cold at home and the engines stop and people who aren't used to hunger -- go hungry. They won't want us to ask. (quiet savagery) They'll want us to get it for them.

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I've been reading blog after blog after blog after blog about any number of topics. On any number of issues. My mind was reeling after attempting to process all this information. Perhaps a bit of sensory overload occurred, but I attempted, actually on my off-duty day (and not at work), to step back and see if there was any form of commonality to these seemingly divergent threads.

And you know what? There was.

Globally. Then nationally. And it got down to this:

We did what we did because we could.

Everyone does.

It's as simple as that.

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This cuts through any and all arguments. Who. What. When. Where. Why. How.

It's all about PITAP. PITAP?

I call this: Positioning In Time And Place.

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I challenge you: prove me wrong.


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A nation, a people, a community, a group, a click, even an individual, does what it can when it can because it can.


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What does this have to do with you? With me? With us as a nation? With us as divergent political groups? With us as a planet?

Everything.

Recognition is power. As is realization.

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Let us consider, for just a moment, and as an example, the indigenous American Indian. Many persons ascribe glorious and positive aspects to this culture; in truth, in many cases Native Americans were overbearing, repressive, female-suppressing warmongers. Do you think that, for example, if they had experienced their Bronze Age first, and then their Industrial Age, they would have embraced Euro invading forces from overseas? I submit they would have slaughtered whom they could, when they could, to stem these assailing forces.

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And this brings me back to today.

It is easy to blog and write about the hideous travails and ideosyncratic ideations, documentations, abrogations and simulacrums of that which we hold normal. We generally write about what we consider to be something disparate from the norm. War. Injustice. Violence. Right. Wrong. All within the context of our cerebral and idealogical interpretations and, more importantly, our primal and base beliefs.

What do I define as normal? In my ideom, I define normal as those who read me within the continental United States, who can read and interpret English, and who are sufficiently educated to find a computer, seek the internet, log on to same, and then purposely, PURPOSELY, seek my website.

There are literally millions and millions of websites. Why have you sought mine? What brought you to my poor, miniscule slice of the web today?

It would be: that which you find normal within your sphere of relativity.

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So what is normal? Is it normal to find a porcelain bathroom with a toilet?

Is it normal to find a table in a restaurant where you can be assured there will not be an IED affixed to its base?

Is it normal to enter Nordstrom and find the socks you wanted?

Is it normal to take your 2001 Chevrolet Tahoe and fill its tank with $2.49/gallon gas for $74 and then complain?

Is it normal to wash your clothes and bedding every week with Tide and wish the Kenmore washer had more settings?

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What would you do without oil?

What would you do without your connection to the internet?

What would you do without this Winter's depletion of your wood or heat?

Take away your car. How would you get around? How would your life change?

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The United States is repressive. Horribly repressive.

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It's easy to criticize the United States.

Whilst enjoying free universites. On student loans. Embraced by the Constitution. On various forms of welfare.

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H.R. 1606 is not yet in effect. So I can write this. I can have an opinion. I can make my website as attractive as, say, that of General Motors.

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To those who would want to destroy the United States:

You set this goal at your own peril. You make your comments, rally the populace, circle the weakest-minded of our genetic pool.

If the shoe were on the 1975 foot, no matter the political leaning, I would bet this would equal the belief: get what you need to get when you need to get it.

It's funny: hunger and darkness tends to cut through the most base of political leanings.

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Why does the United States do what it does?

Because it can because it can. Because, quite frankly, we have God beside us.


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And because it's right.





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Period.







Thus endeth my blog post.


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