Day 131c: Championing all those Different … (September 07, 2019)
I was starting to get close to Lexington when I came across the most unusual political sign; a sign apparently touting Charlie Kostelni to become (or remain) the region’s “Buffalo Supervisor.” I mean, it made sense in one way for a supervisor of buffalo to be a Republican (seeing as how the United States more rosy party does tend to lean more heavily towards a Wild West, might-makes-right mentality), and yet as far as I knew there were no significant herds of buffalo in Virginia* … Weird, this was – truly.
*I did a bit of research into the matter after The Walk was over and found out that “Buffalo Supervisor” actually referred to an particular administrative position for a particular local political district (the Buffalo District of Rockbridge County in Virginia), not a person who manages an actual herd of buffalo – which made a lot more sense, when I thought about it.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster … In truth, the surest way to corrupt a man is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who look alike or think alike than those who look or think differently … And in that vein we come to one of the saddest lessons of history – the lesson that if we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of our bamboozlement. At that point we’re no longer interested in uncovering our delusion or finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us fully. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken for such a silly ride. So we would all do well to remain ever open & vigilant, for once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” ~ inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche & Carl Sagan
“Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, even without all the science I’ve discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening in our society. The vast majority of our daily sustenance now comes from raw injustice & abject misery. Every decent man, woman and child knows that if someone were to offer to show us a film of how their meat & milk are produced, the same would be a blood & screaming-soaked horror film. In truth, we all know much more than we care to admit, and keep the same buried deep down in the darkest places of our knowing – ignored and forgotten and disavowed. And yet the fact remains that whenever we consumed farmed meat or dairy we are living, quite literally, on corrupted beings and tortured flesh. And ever increasingly, that corruption and that torture are becoming our own.” ~ via Jonathan Safran Foer
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