I was minding my own business doing research on the players in the biggest political scandal in our nation’s history. What an ugly and divisive event this has been for our country. While looking over my notes I opened the web browser to search for something. Facebook was on the open tab and staring me right in the kisser was a big picture of an aging Jane Fonda. There was a sigh. There was a lengthy message accompanying the photo and I knew parts of it were bogus. Many of us accept without much question everything we read on Facebook as they do with media news and commentary.
We’ll accept it more readily if it’s negative toward someone to whom we already have an aversion. The Internet is a wonderful tool, but it’s made us lazy headline readers and victims of search engines leading our attempts at research. It also worsens our national attention deficit disorder. Instead of sticking to what I was doing, I felt compelled to add at least one bit of truth to Ms. Fonda’s Facebook spread. I added her quote about communism:
If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist. . .. I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism. – Jane Fonda
Back in 2000, while trying to sell a book, she presented sorrowful for her excursions with the North Vietnamese. I wrote a letter explaining that there are better places to begin making amends than the Oprah show. If in fact it was her aim to make amends. Over the years, however, she’s only appeared apologetic for taking a picture with North Vietnamese soldiers perched on an anti-aircraft gun.
After I posted to Facebook her views on communism, a Fonda apologist responded. It should not have surprised me. Not long ago, after reading about John Kerry trying to derail or prevent talks between the Trump administration and the Palestinians, I thought I’d remind people about who John Kerry is. An angry Kerry apologist responded, quite incoherently I might add. It’s interesting how all of them use the same tact. They build a strawman and commence pounding the snot out of him while attacking your character and everything for which they believe you stand. Yet, in all their zeal they never acknowledge they don’t know you from Adam and never ever address facts presented. They just spew illogical hatred. And just as you see and hear the yapping heads on television or radio, they will never let you have the last word.
If it was possible to filibuster in print, they would. Maybe it is some type of psychosis which, unless I am familiar with the sender, is why I rarely respond to comments or emails. However, while defending the Jane Fonda’s and John Kerry’s of our world they forget what’s most important. Time passes, views may soften, and there is always generational ignorance of the truth, but the truth remains the truth. And the documented truth is these two individuals betrayed our military members serving in Vietnam, betrayed our country, and collaborated with our enemy.
According to the Fonda apologist my Dear Jane letter is just more garbage and I am harboring anger over something that happened nearly 50 years ago. I am also a lost soul trapped in my sin of anger. I guess she told me. It may come as a shock to her and like-minded others, but I am not an angry person. I am not angry at Jane. Rather I pity her as I pity anyone who cannot look or think through their malignant hatred and deeply ingrained biases to see the greatness of this country. I especially pity the self-loathing and those who, because of the opportunities our country provides, have lived privileged lives yet want to change the country to conform to an ideology or form of government that would ensure no one else can ever raise their life’s status. Life’s hard lessons taught me that harboring anger and hatred sucks the life right out of you. We need to let go of it. But letting go of hatred does not mean that I or anyone should ever let go of the truth or allow it to be buried beneath misinformation or incoherent rage. As a people, we’ll certainly fair better when we accept the truth and move on.
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32
Nowadays, it is quite difficult to have civil discussion. Angry people hold to arguments made up out of whole cloth. They either lack knowledge of facts or they simply accept a storyline that plays to their emotional state. A story that justifies hatred held for a person or group. Sadly, our country’s major media are the greatest purveyors of the slanted stories and the hatred. Some have morphed into around the clock hate machines. It is our nation’s greatest abuse of hard won freedom.
Humans are fallible. Not a single one of us is perfect. All of us have something in our past for which we wished we could have a do over. I suspect most of us could not endure the scrutiny and hatred directed at our President. His supporters are deplorable, they smell, they’re Nazis, they’re stupid and it goes on and on and most of it coming from other politicians, employees of the federal government and the news media. With all of our human failings, we have the audacity to stand in judgment of people we’ve never met or engaged in conversations. We’ve turned into a fairly pathetic lot. We long ago stopped seeking the truth. It is only the hard and unbridled truth that doesn’t always agree with our worldviews that will set us free.
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E-Mail JD Pendry: jd@jdpendry.com
