CatalenaMara

I have always heard that the destruction of the cities was due to breaking the guest/host relationship.
Now this was the sin of Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
—Ezekiel 16:49-50

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. (Ezekiel 16:49)

Oh, sorry -- someone else posted it just before me!

I have the same problem when I read news items relating to climate change. I know there's always going to be a couple of (inevitably rude) loudmouths in the comments claiming that it's all a myth.

We may have already passed the point where climate change is preventable, and there's still morons trying to prevent anything being done to save millions (possibly billions) of lives over the next century. I wish they all had to live in Polynesia (which will mostly vanish under rising sea levels), or in a drought-stricken area in Africa, or in part of India where the Ganges will dry up in summer once the Himalayan glaciers are gone.

>>>I have the same problem when I read news items relating to climate change. I know there's always going to be a couple of (inevitably rude) loudmouths in the comments claiming that it's all a myth.

My last boss (the one who laid me off in 2007) was like that. Always ranting and raving that climate change was a myth. He liked to say it was "something Al Gore invented to make himself look important". That man drove me nuts! It was absolutely impossible to ask him to look at any "on-the-ground" facts.

My brother once worked for the weather service, and once in a similar job had the opportunity to review unpublished weather charts for southern California for the past 150 years, and there it was, the sudden upticking in temperature a few decades ago. (I forget the exact details, but I know he'd have them at his fingertips.)

It's got to be at least once a day that I ask myself a similar question about my own stupidity. Yesterday I was Googling something about a black & white TV crime show and stumbled over a bulletin board for something called the New Nation News. As far as I could tell, it seemed to be a cataloging of every black on white crime anyone could dig up with comments being a free-for all for Black hatred, slurs, and offensive middle-school slang.

Why I a) clicked, b) started to read, c) continued to read even after becoming outraged remains a mystery to me. I have less sympathy for myself than the posters. They may well be ignorant or just plain stupid and not know better. I'm supposed to be smart enough not to read stuff I can't change and will just ruin my morning.

So if you ever figure it out, please share.

I wish I could figure it out. I tell myself not to waste the time; that I'll just get furious and start ranting and raving about all the ignorant and stupid racists and homophobes out there. And then I keep reading, and I have no one but myself to blame. (Ever notice none of these posters know how to spell? And that their CAP key seems PERMANENTLY STUCK?)

I guess there is a part of my past I can't put behind - the part I spent living in a virulently racist, homophobic, right wing western Arizona town when I was a teen and into my 20s. What can you say about a place which was Timothy McVeigh's last address before he blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building?

My boss at my first full time job was one of those guys always going on government conspiracies and the evils of the feds. I could never get past the cognitive disconnect of the fact that he was a deputy county assessor - a civil servant. A government employee. Hello?

I spent my teen years in that town, and buried myself in science fiction and gothic and historical novels; wanting to be anywhere and anywhen than where and when I was.

But after I got away (at the ripe old age of 22) and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, about as opposite as I could possibly get from that town, part of me still knows that people like that exist. I remember their faces. I remember their voices.

I just have to say to myself, "Step away from the keyboard...."