Itō Jakuchū – Five hundred arhats
Orlando
This will be my only post on the horrorshow in Orlando. As usual, Fred said it more concisely than I ever could-
From the standpoint of a curmudgeon, to which ashen-souled tribe I belong, the events in Orlando provide the gray satisfaction of confirmation. We in our dismal trade derive no joy from unavoidable sufferings springing from the routine malice of existence—cancer, automobile wrecks, birth defects—but we thrive on the self-inflicted, on the finger-hammerings accompanied by cries of “Ouch!” We observe that Muslims are nothing but trouble anywhere, so we import Muslims. We observe that diversity is the chief source of bitter strife in the world, so we open the borders. When seeking employees, we deliberately hire people who can’t do the job. In our universities we purposely admit those who neither can nor want to learn. Then, when the obvious, the predictable, indeed the inevitable unexpectedly occurs, we insist that it really didn’t, or shouldn’t have, or wouldn’t have, or something, and do it again. In its way it is wonderfully funny.
Unless of course you are among the dead.
Something that cannot be forgotten in all the shameless political posturing I’ve seen since this terrible event- that was 50 AMERICANS that were killed ON OUR OWN SOIL- and why we cannot rise up in righteous anger at that simple fact, why we cannot bring ourselves to speak the true name of our enemy- ISLAM- is a mystery to me. We have lost whatever grit and manhood we ever possessed as a nation.