Reflections From a Murky Pond

I don’t really suppose that many people will care greatly about this but the replica of the H.M.S. Bounty has by this point been lost at sea approximately 90 miles southeast of Hatteras Cape Hatteras, NC to hurricane Sandy.

H.M.S. Bounty

Her 17 man crew had to abandon ship earlier this morning because her engines had failed, the storm was too bad to raise sail, and she was taking on water faster than her pumps could cope with.

God bless this frail ship of mine,
tho’ tiny it may be;
God bless its youthful skipper,
and those who sail with me;
Grant thy grace to all the stalwart lads
who bravely man its deck;
Come sail with us O Blessed One,
and each of us protect;
We’ll sail upon the northern breeze
to roam in search of glory;
It has been and always will be,
fate will set my life story;
So when you take this sailor, Lord,
forever from the sea;
I’ll sail my ship through Heaven’s gate,
for a sailor I’ll always be.

— Wayne E. Walters

In 1961 she was built in the traditional manner to the original Bounty’s specifications from drawings from British admiralty archive files at the Smith and Ruhland Shipyard shipyard – who also built the Blue Nose – in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia for MGM’s 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty. Since then she has plied both the seas and film.

And so the Graveyard of the Atlantic will claim another toll, as is its due, and another of the few tall, gallant ladies of the sea left to us in these days shall hear the tolling of eight bells as her watch is ended forever.

As Thomas Gray penned some 270 years ago, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” We’re all doomed, either by our own hands or those of others to read the wheel of fate, ever repeating our failures and losses.

We’re All Doomed To Repeat History

You see, George Santayana was overly optimistic when he wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” He only got it half right. He didn’t understand that, more often than not, those who do remember the past are just as doomed – or more so, because they can see what is happening – as those blissfully ignorant masses who, en mass, are the only ones with the power to effect change.

So I shall follow the true wisdom of King Solomon and too commend joy, for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that his God has given him under the sun.

~*~

The Universe spirals downward to dissolution while the Reaper sits by, drinking tea sweetened with dead stars.

Here’s an uncomfortable and difficult question – If we’re so racist, wasn’t it an act of either rampant evil or gross stupidity to install Barack Obama as POTUS during a time when America and its government absolutely had to pull together?

Put aside your ingrained knee-jerk reaction and actually think about that question for a moment or two or, hopefully, a bit longer.

If America truly is such a racist country and that racism is wholly and solely a “White Problem,” what was anyone thinking by putting a Black man in the White House during a national crisis? If the Liberals, Progressives, and Blacks are right about the American people they had to know that no good would come from such an act, that Obama would accomplish nothing while in office, and that this would further imperil our nation.

If we accept their postulate – though we know the danger of such postulates – that any and all dissent against Obama is because Americans just can’t stand the thought of a Black man as POTUS, then the only question left is whether or not the Liberals, Progressives, and Blacks installed Obama with the full expectation of his being balked at every turn due to racism.

If they knew in their hearts that this would happen, then it was an overt act of evil on their part. It would have to be classed an attempt to destroy America. If, on the other hand, they thought that things wouldn’t go that way and that Obama would be allowed to do whatever he wanted while in office, they were just stupid.

Either way, evil or stupid, if the Liberals, Progressives, and Blacks are right about America being a racist nation, their voting for Obama in 2008 was not done with the best interests of America in mind. That’s something that they really can’t get around or make excuses for.

Freedom of Speech is one of the basic rights of Man – possibly the most important of such rights – but it is also the one such right that the fewest people actually believe in and wholeheartedly support. Statistically speaking, nobody truly wants freedom of speech.

They just want freedom for their speech and for the speech of others to be silenced.

Even the majority of that small number of individuals that seem to support of freedom of speech for those that they disagree with don’t really want their enemies to be able to speak freely. They just fear the possible later consequences to themselves of limiting freedom of speech for others.

No – Free Speech is Unwanted and Attacked

Thus we have: Hate Crime laws; the ongoing attempts to pass Hate Speech laws; lawsuits launched against venues hosting hated speakers; the MSM’s smear campaigns against certain sorts of individuals and groups; attempts to shutdown websites and blogs which are hated by some; and the attempts to exile certain individuals to “spam gulag” on social media sites.

The Biggest Lie

The biggest lie that we tell others – and ourselves, more likely than not – is based on phrases such as, “Criticism isn’t censorship” and “You’re not free from criticism.” Like all effective lies, these are based upon a grain of truth. Our right to speak freely doesn’t mean that we can’t be criticized for our speech and criticism isn’t, prima facie, censorship.

But it is the intent that makes the lie. Vastly more often than not, what people call criticism is just an attempt to silence someone through harassment and brow-beating. Hence, it is an attempt to censor unwanted speech. It’s just one that we can easily lie to others and ourselves about.

Life and Death – Twin sisters, two edges of the same blade, or the difference between light and shadow, each giving shape and stricture to the other.

Life and Death

Yet, how differently do we mortals feel about each of them, loving one and hating the other even as we bound to both.

Life asked Death, “Why do people love me but hate you?”

Death responded, “Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth.”

How strange and sad it is that we love the fleeting lie or fantasy that is life yet hate the eternal truth that is death, and how hellish would be the lesson we would learn if we could, in our folly and hubris, make life the lasting truth and spurn forever the gift of death’s truth.