For The Record

Bear with me, I gotta get this off my chest. I'll try to keep it short.
   I've seen lately a strong streak of 'not my fault' breaking out among people who count themselves as our political leaders, or who desperately want to be seen that way, at any rate. They'll espouse a position or advocate a course of action using inflammatory rhetoric and dangerous imagery, and then try to completely disavow any responsibility for what happens when someone heeds that message a little too well. I'm seeing this from both the left and the right. Well, mostly the right.
   Let me make this clear: even if you have no direct legal responsibility for what someone does when they take your message too far, you absolutely, positively, without a doubt have moral responsibility. And if you count yourself a God-fearing person - as many on the right claim - the idea of moral culpability should terrify you far more than any temporal legal entanglements.
   Words are weapons, and once you hear something you can't un-hear it. You can put down the knife or the gun, you can dismantle the atom bomb, but words stay. And poisonous words keep spreading their sickness. Quietly. When vulnerable people are at their lowest they'll latch onto something they heard, something vitriolic and hostile, and cling to the hate like a drowning man clings to a life preserver. Hateful words can lead to deadly consequences, and the person who delivered the message stands accountable for what happens afterward.
   Still have your doubts? Think of it this way: would you hold your child responsible if the neighbor kids beat up someone because she said that person was a terrorist, even if she didn't actually participate in the beating? Of course you would, your girl would be as liable for the bruises and scrapes as the kids who threw the punches. And if you denied your child was responsible, the parents of the other kids and the one who got beat up would definitely have a different opinion.
   When someone in a position of power, authority or influence advocates a violent course of action - even when the message is symbolic or thinly veiled - they bear moral responsibility for any violence that follows when people heed that message. End of story.

Another Career

I've been watching the History Channel a lot lately, I can't get enough of R. Lee Ermey blowing away watermelons (he was Gunny Hartman in 'Full Metal Jacket'), or the hefty proprietors in Pawn Stars, or nerds on TV in The Universe. But I really get into the Nostradamus/2012/Armageddon stuff, probably for the same reason I love circus sideshows and carnival midways, it's just too crazy to ignore. Watching the nearly-unhinged people who delve into medieval French and Mayan calendar stuff made me realize there's a career opportunity there.
   I'm going to become a Doomsday predictor.
   You know, one of those guys who gets on TV, wearing a turtleneck and a tweed jacket and looking all serious, proclaiming the end of the world is just around the corner. I don't want to be a crazy megachurch preacher - yet - I'm talking about the kind of guy who can get on a morning talk show and get people to buy into his ration of crap just by seeming to be sincere about it. I'll have a book to sell too, obviously. I'm thinking if I can get an appearance on Rachael Ray and The View, then Oprah can't be far behind. And everyone knows if you have the Oprah stamp of approval, you're golden.
   The only thing is, I may be late to the bandwagon on this one. 2012 is only three years away, and if the shows on the History Channel are any indication, the crazy-eyebrowed Nostradamus-and-Mayan doomsday guys may already have the market sewn up.
   But there's always room for one more loud, ill-informed pundit on TV, isn't there?