Not Entitled

"Male privilege and entitlement are dying a very painful death; no one gives up power without a struggle." - Gloria Allred

All the way around, yesterday was a lousy day.  Another visit to my cardiologist came with no good news.  He doubled up the medication he gave me two weeks ago, added an additional medication, is scheduling an angiogram for September and expects I will need additional pacemaker surgery in a few months.  Needless to say, I'm disappointed.  All this in the same week I had unscheduled dental surgery and a consultation with an endodontist to schedule the root canal I will be having next week. 

Setting all that aside, it's been a bad week in the world.  Seven months into Donald Trump's presidency, we are are facing the first threat of nuclear war. Two childish dictators in a pissing contest can take the whole world down.  It's too terrifying to contemplate.  But there isn't even a need to go so far from home to get up close to hatred and mayhem.  A trip to Charlottesville, Virginia would do the job.

Yesterday's neo-nazi, white supremacist  march in Charlottesville and the violence that erupted with counterprotesters ended with a 20-year-old white man deliberately driving his car into the counterprotesters resulting in the death of a young woman and injury to many others.  As if that wasn't bad enough, Donald Trump made a weak, pathetic statement that fell far short of condemnation of the neo-nazi groups.    For the rest of the day and night, CNN was filled with outraged pundits both in rebuke of Donald Trump's statement and in defense of it.  Several times I heard pundits on both sides refer not to just the rights of everyone to free speech but also to the right of everyone to their own opinion.  I take exception with that.

You can differ with me politically - I'm okay with that.  I may lean slightly left of center and you may lean a little right.  There is room for us both to hold our views.  But I will not defend or even support your right to hold an opinion that is rooted in hate and fear.  You do not have a right to believe you are superior because of the colour of your skin.  You do not have the right to believe you are superior because of the shape of your genitals.  You do not have the right to believe you are superior because of where you happened to be born.  You do not have a right to turn your back on desperate people because you are afraid that one in a million of them may hurt you. Refugees are not Skittles.  You do not have a right to hate.  So no.  If any of those things describe you - you do not have a right to your opinion.  Crawl back under your rock and stay there.  You will turn into fossil fuel soon enough.