it's not fair

Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam, this will never end will it? We never gave a shit about South Vietnam, we didn’t own it before the war, so when we gave it up, we weren’t giving up anything that was ours. We just didn’t want the commies to have it, and now they do, except they aren’t really commies anymore, but they are kind of a buffer against the Chinese who are sort of our enemies. Not much of a buffer, but they have fought one or two wars against them and held them to a draw.

I’m going to differ with you on fairness. From my experience with little kids I think we are all born with some kind of perception of it. Little kids knew right away when something wasn’t fair and they were upset when something unfair happened, even if it wasn’t to them directly. Also there are experiments where kids are shown puppet shows where one puppet mistreats another and the kids dislike the bad puppet.

But as we get older our powers of rationalization increase so that we are able to look at any situation and analyze it so that the outcome that just happens to benefit us is also the fairest outcome. Myself, if I, say, get drunk and don’t show up for work, I know I’ve done the wrong thing. I’ve done wrong things before, and I will do them in the future, but I recognize that I shouldn’t have done what I did. But some people, the rationalizers, are all like, my wife said something nasty to me and I was hurt so that’s why I hit the bottle, and my boss is a big asshole, so it’s really their faults, not mine.

I picked this up in this great book I never miss a chance to plug, The Lost City by Alan Ehrenhalt, in which he examines the southwest side in the 50’s. It’s a little conservative to my tastes, so I think you might like it. Basically he is comparing the 50’s to the 90’s, and the 90’s lose. The example he gave was sin. He was talking about some church by Marquette Park, and how some of the parishioners would go to the tavern before or after church, and they knew they were sinning, but they did it anyway, but at least they knew they were sinning, whereas people of today go on Dr Phil and it turns out they were abused as children or something and then this and that and then they are hustled out to some fancy spa/sanitarium, and none of it was really their fault. I’m not so sure that there is more rationalizing going on here than then, but I think it is better to own up to your sins. Maybe you want to read more about this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-City-Forgotten-Community/dp/0465041930

I don’t think there was any one point where everybody registered their deeds and had their property. I expect it was fought over even after that and the folks aligned with the winning side got property and the ones on the other side lost their property. I don’t see any fair in this other than might makes right. Even in the present day when things are all legal-like and nice, I suspect that if some big corporation set its eyes on Beaglesonia and all these high powered lawyers began showing up in the courthouse riffling through records it would make you nervous.

I think if I am a landless peasant, I much prefer the option that if I fight and win I can get a piece of land, which I will have to continue to fight for to keep, to the option of this land belongs to this other guy and tough shit. I don’t really think fighting is fair, some of us are just bigger than others through no virtue or fault of our own, but I think it is fairer to have a chance to fight over something than to have no say in the situation.

If we redistributed the land, maybe some would squander it, but some would work hard and keep it, isn’t that more fair than everybody keeps what they have and those that have nothing continue to have nothing, and the system is rigged so that the rich keep getting richer and the poor, poorer?

Well there is a ringing call to revolution isn’t it? Hippie Ken would be proud. But fat old retiree Ken would have to add, that he is not sure how one would bring this about, and after the violent upheaval we may well end up worse for everybody than we were before.

In this book about slavery the guy talks about how slaveholders were in a bit of a pickle because slavery does not fit in with liberty and the equality of man, but they were all like this and that, economics, inferiority of the Negro, blah, blah, blah, so really they weren’t doing anything wrong. I am no fan of that blowhard Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves all his life, and only freed a few at his demise, but at least he admitted that it was wrong. At least he knew he was sinning.

I’m just saying it is not fair.