Killing the Buddha.

It became necessary to destroy the town to save it', a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong. ~Peter Arnett, Associated Press war correspondent.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!

I first became familiar with this ancient Buddhist koan many years ago. In some versions there's a sort of a short story that goes with it, in which a younger Monk comes to the Master, excitedly saying that he has met Buddha on the road. The Master, of course, replies "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" The idea being that it's not truly the Buddha that the young monk met, but rather a reflection of his own desires, which must of course be overcome if one is to proceed on the path to enlightenment.

When I first became familiar with this Koan I was a conservative, we'll get back to that in a minute.

In case you don't recognize it, the picture above is the gigantic niche in the side of an Afghan mountain where the taller of the two ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan once stood. These two gigantic sculptures were built in the 5th and 6th centuries C.E. in the valley of Bamiyan which was then a Buddhist religious center along the Silk Road. The Buddhas were destroyed by the Taliban, who considered them idols, in March of 2001 despite worldwide condemnation of this action and numerous diplomatic attempts by foreign governments to prevent the destruction. At the time, this was considered a worldwide symbol of fanaticism and religious intolerance. I was very against it, and in fact wrote a paper about this in a college class that I was taking at the time.

I was a conservative, and not only that but a conservative Christian at the time as well, though thanks to the fact that my ex-wife and I were in the process of splitting up at the time, I'd soon begin my journey out of that mess.

Based on my life experience, I would argue that much of the destructiveness of Man, particularly (in Christian terms) Sinful unregenerate Man (That is, Man who refuses to accept-or falsely claims to accept- God, or more particularly Jesus Christ and the redemption from Sin or 'regeneration' that this acceptance provides...according to doctrine at least...) most often comes from ignoring reality and indeed, most often ignoring beliefs, doctrines and facts that are well known to the person in favor of what they want to believe is true or what their carnal flesh, that is, their human nature that is still consumed with Sin, wants. This is why the Buddhists teach "Kill the Buddha" and why the very First Commandment is "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me" and thus Christianity, Islam, Judaism and all the offshoots thereof strictly prohibit idolatry. It's also why in the terms of my former conservative Christianity, Believers are exhorted to let their old selves go, to "Die to self" and pick up their Cross and follow [the ways of] Jesus.

Of course, because this is America and the most common metrics by which one's Christianity are often measured are Man's Approval and public religiosity, in practice, most Christian public figures are anything but. This also tends to apply heavily in politics, and as I used to always say when arguing with my ex-wife, I'd spend an hour arguing with her only to waste 58 minutes of that time and in the last two I'd find out what it was that she really wanted.

Why do I bring this up?

Because among other things, the Trump-loving nihilism of the modern American conservative would, if unconstrained by laws such as the Posse Comitatus Act, send American troops into action against basically nothing at best, and have them kill unarmed men, women and children whose only infraction against anything is a desire for a better life...this when the troops are already over-deployed, over-stressed, often under-trained as maritime accidents involving the United States Navy keep bearing out. What it basically comes down to is Trump isn't getting his wall and wants some sort of stupid monument to his own bottomless insecurities and damned vanity, even if that "monument" is dead brown kids in the Sonora Desert. Never mind that undocumented border crossings are at a 46-year low, and never mind that basically nobody but Trump wants this, and never mind that there's no funding, no mission, no objectives, no plan, no rules of engagement and nobody even knows if the Soldiers would be armed or not, at this point. Legally, the military cannot be used to enforce the law on U.S. soil without specific acts of Congress authorizing for this to be the case, and any such missions taken without this must be carefully defined, with extremely strict rules of engagement, such as suppressing acts of armed rebellion or other civil disorder.

Far-rightist fantasies about machine-gunning undocumented immigrants or protesters be damned, it simply cannot legally be done. Perhaps more to the point, in a heavily-armed, litigious and politically reactive society like the United States of America, such acts would very likely create a legal and political firestorm that nobody could put out, least of all Trump and his team of LegalZoom lawyers or the incompetent nuts that make up today's Republican party. Perhaps more to the point, chances are excellent that one hell of a lot of us might not survive it, either, and you can bet your ass that the majority of casualties would not be People of Color, because most gun violence happens within each race and usually within the same social groups, which all of the shooters are usually part of.

Go ahead, look at the militia nuts and the Nazis and especially the Sovereign Citizens, hell, look at your average bunch of dumb-ass Libertarians and you go ahead and tell me that, given their chance to shoot it out with all and sundry, these motherfuckers wouldn't spend a disproportionate amount of time shooting at each other and those conservatives who they consider to be insufficiently conservative. I'll wait.

Hell, look at the over-dramatic soup sandwich that is the Trump White House and see if you can tell me that either an attempt to seize power as a dictatorship, or any effort to counter a political or violent revolution from any quarter whatever wouldn't turn into a ham-handed, blood-soaked failure in a matter of days, if you can. The motherfuckers are about to send Army National Guard troops out into the desert, basically to stare at nothing through their field glasses for hours at a time, for months on end, with no real reason for it. There is no enemy, and no threat, and yet this will be an expensive failure simply because there is no endgame and no objective other than to make Tang the Conqueror feel better about himself since the Mueller investigation is still chugging along, the trade war isn't working out, and his popularity is underwater...again.

In effect, those professional sayers of stupid shit, the cast and crew of Fox & Friends, are the ones running the country...because Trump sure isn't. The man is an idiot with the leadership skills of a German Brown Cockroach. But goddamn, he sure spends a lot of time watching TV. 

My God, though, these self-righteous hypocrites never waste an opportunity to try and look righteous, all the better if they can appropriate the work of others to do so and don't have to do one single goddamned thing themselves. At least Trump has the superficial defense of possibly having Dementia, personality disorders, senility, etc. What in the fuck is this guy's excuse?

It's not just Trump. This is the modern Republican Party. The very same people who'd retroactively give Abe Lincoln the boot, and replace him with Jefferson Davis if they could. These are the people who think that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush (Both of 'em) basically are commie liberals AKA Republicans In Name Only at this point. Hell, criticize Trump one time, or fail at his crazy, unrealistic and very much destined for failure policies and you're out.

American Conservatism has effectively reached the point where it's gone too far and can no longer sustain itself.

The Trump/Pence administration is perpetually the "The Dog Ate My Homework" administration and deserves to be known as such in perpetuity.

They're also the "Look at me, LOOK AT ME! Look at ME and how holy *I* Am" administration, or possibly the "Loud obnoxious idiot who just has to be seen giving the whole world nothing but an upraised middle finger" administration, depending on who's speaking.

For all that, I'm starting to think their followers are worse. Here is Hollywood F-lister and shitty stand-up comedian Owen Benjamin (who is evidently a Libertarian and a Trump Supporter but yet likes to spend a lot of time talking about the pubic hair of other men) talking stupid in the general direction of David Hogg on Twitter. I'm fucking tired of these people, hundreds or thousands of them pop up every single time there's some kind of a shooting and I'm getting fucking tired of it.

These people would rather shoot down the future, and would rather destroy our educational system, and denigrate the young than accept some very basic regulations on firearms that pale in comparison to what citizens in most other First World nations...including heavily militarized States like Israel...have to deal with.

Why?

You can boil modern Republicanism down to two words: "Fuck You." My friend Jay suggested I should have added "...Pay Me" where I said this in my last post, except that he missed the point that to these idiots the "Fuck You" for the politicians as much as the base, is itself the payoff. We're not talking about people who can think far enough ahead to have a plan to get paid, if you're somebody like Scott Pruitt, you just get lost down a graft rabbit hole of your own making, to the point where it looks like Trump, of all fucking people, is considering firing him.

But make no mistake, corruption is exactly what a lot of these people...most especially the base...signed up for. They just thought the rest of us would join in, or go away somehow or something something gazpacho. In other words, they thought they were going to get away with it.

Now that they're not, they're mad. Now that it looks like their politicians are going to be held to account and little by little, the voters already are facing consequences (some recently engineered by said politicians) it's all a big let-down and funny enough, the anti-government talk is starting again, not that it really ever died down much.

Why? Because conservatism itself has been thrown out the window. All these people care about is hate and racism. They've set fire to literally everything else they've ever claimed in the last year.

Like I keep saying, it's a wonder there aren't more of these people getting fucked up on Opioids all the time.

Then there's this fucking guy, right here. Scott Walker was in full panic mode yesterday after the election of Rebecca Dallet, the Democratic-backed liberal candidate, to the Wisconsin Supreme Court the other day. GOOD! These motherfuckers should be worried, because people are pissed off. In a (small-L) liberal (small-d) democratic society...NO elected seat should ever be considered safe, and the electorate should damned well be prepared to hold their elected officials to account at all times.

Like I've been saying, it never seems to cross their minds not to be complete dicks to basically everybody. They keep sowing the wind with this behavior, they need to reap the whirlwind.

The thing that gets me about Walker's Tweet, though, is the "Optimism and organization" part. "Tell your story?" Has he not been paying attention to the story his own damned party has been telling for the last 20 years, and most especially for the last three, with Trump?

Optimism? From Republicans? I'm just not seeing it.

These people are preparing to try to burn America down, because they're finding out that Trump conned them and their own ideas they've thought were so great for so long don't actually work, and they've mostly been finding out the worst of this in the last couple of weeks.

Look, I'm divorced, OK? I know what it is to have to overcome illusions, to find out that everything you ever believed about something was nothing but a hologram. It can be done, it can be done without losing one's conservatism, I did it. Why can't you?

Here's a knife, Scott, now go out there and stab that Buddha...

It's for your own good. To become what we can be, we often must overcome the things we think we should be.

A soldier named Nobushige came to Hakuin and asked "Is there really a paradise and a hell?"
Who are you? Hakuin asked
"I am Samurai" Nobushige replied.
"You? a Soldier? What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? You look like a beggar!"
Nobushige became very angry and began to draw his sword. Hakuin continued "So, you have a sword? Your weapon is probably too dull to cut off my head!"
As Nobushige drew his sword, Hakuin boomed "Here open the gates of Hell."
Understanding the Master's discipline, Nobushige sheathed his sword and bowed.
"Here open the gates of paradise" said Hakuin.

Listen, ya'll. I remember when the first MacDonald's opened up in Moscow in the summer of 1991. Clown shoes went where Boots on the ground never could. I think there is a lesson in that. Peace is better than war, and if your ego or your religion requires dead kids in the desert for you to feel good about yourself, you need a mental health professional or a new religion, full stop. As imperfect as they often are, know that the rules we make for our diplomacy, our trade, and even our use of force are not for others, but for ourselves, so that we do not become monsters. Being better than Al Qaeda or Daesh or the Taliban means we have to act as a better people, even when it's hard. If you want to defeat terrorism, do not allow yourself to be terrorized.

If you do not want to live in fear, stop allowing yourself to be afraid.

We're all human beings, and when they fought us, the Taliban thought of us as the evil Empire, and of themselves as being Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. No, we don't all get to be the "good guys" and we don't all get to be right. But we should understand that most people see themselves as being the good guys, if not as being right. Most of us, anyway, are just trying to do the best we can with what we've got. Right now there's a lot of bad actors out there...but there's more of us than there are of them and don't you forget it.

Until more people abandon nihilism and selfishness and trying to destroy the world to save it for their politics or their small-minded shitty interpretations of God and then come to understand compassion, that's the only defense we're ever gonna have.

So stab that Buddha, and just keep walking. The road is hard, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Part 2.