So many of us are quick to anger and quick to speak, or these days, quick to email and text. Our hair-trigger society has a fuse shorter than the attention span of Bo Radley. People are furious and instead of getting to the heart of what they’re most angry about they lash out in areas that have nothing to do with the reason for their fury. I’m guilty of that myself. For years the Federal Bureau of Prisons stood by and watched as my brother was beaten and raped and suffered with Parkinson’s disease. The more I tried to stop the madness the worse his treatment grew. I wanted to give back to the prison officials all they did to my brother, but it wasn’t possible or logical. Instead, on one particular occasion, I took my frustrations out on the woman paying in pennies at, of all places, Penneys. My response was over the top and I still feel horrible about making the comments I did. Quick to anger, quick with the snide one-liners. Years of dealing with hecklers in the audience while doing standup comedy helped sharpen the tongue.
Anger and intolerance leads people to do strange things: go to war, burn books, riot at soccer games, and eschew lactose, and there’s never any logical reason for any of these actions. Most arguments made by intolerant or angry people who can’t rightly channel their rage have all the consistency of space-shuttle Thanksgiving gravy. Why can’t anyone just shut up and listen anymore? Whatever happened to the genteel art of sitting back and letting someone go on and on thinking he’s right while you while you bask in the knowledge that he is completely full of crap?
Tolerance doesn’t mean you agree with everything other people say, or that you subordinate your best instincts to the tyranny of mass opinion. It simply means you pretend not to know that everyone on the planet but you is a total moron. The most unforgivable thing about intolerance is that, by its inherent assumption that one group, belief, profession, or lifestyle is superior to another, it fails to take into account the ultimate truth that binds us all. The fact that, at the end of the day, we are all equal pains in the behind in the eyes of the Lord.
