Learning the Hard Way

Learning the Hard Way

Learning the hard way, you discover that bees sting, pepper is not for snorting, milk curdles, and the Democrats will never end the wars;

Learning the hard way, you learn that civilization is not civilized, and that the criminally insane and their functionaries smile at you from your TV screen;

Learning the hard way, you find it a tad more than unsettling that one of the smilers thought the deaths of half a million Iraqi children was “worth it;”

Learning the hard way, you realize that Washington D.C. is occupied by AIPAC, the universe is expanding, and that the gravitational pull of objects in space may bend space and time;

Learning the hard way, you gradually become aware that when you joined the military, in what surely was the most hopelessly gullible moment of your life, you were duped and lied to;

Learning the hard way, you begin to perceive that 9/11 was a false flag terrorist attack, that they don’t hate us for our freedoms (because in reality we don’t have any) and that words on a printed page or flowing from a newscaster’s mouth consist of roughly 7 to 15 percent truth, 5 percent error; and the rest lies;

Learning the hard way, you understand you have become the guy standing on the box with the bag over his head and the electrodes tied to his genitals;

Learning the hard way, you realize you also have become the grinning, strutting beast who forces him to stand there and pose for the camera;

Learning the hard way, you figure out that wars are never fought for humanitarian reasons; that the candidate you voted for lied about virtually everything; and that no one really knows how to fix a broken bicycle;

Learning the hard way, you deduce that apartheid can never be justified, that Israel’s army is not the most moral in the world, that Hezbollah really is the party of God, and that 2000 years ago the Roman governor of Palestine who uttered the words, “What is truth?” had made the discovery that reality becomes extremely porous and leaky whenever Jews start accusing someone of evil-doing.

Learning the hard way, you look up the word “anomie” in the dictionary and read that it means a collapse or breakdown of individuals or societies due to absence or erosion of social values or norms;

Learning the hard way, you finally surmise that the reddish thread on the sleeve of your coat is your life unraveling;

Learning the hard way, you learn that the speed of light in a vacuum equals 3x10¹⁰ centimeters per second, that every 45 minutes the sun bathes the planet in as much energy as humans use in a year; and that God is the sublime jewel;

Learning the hard way, you discover that Congress in reality is made up of 535 specimens of the lowest species of life on the planet, and that even the oil-eating microbes at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico have a more highly developed sense of honor and decency;

Learning the hard way, you conclude that campaign donations are legalized bribery, and that democracy, when subjected to the influence of money, doesn’t work, that it in fact achieves precisely the opposite of what democracy was intended to achieve;

Learning the hard way, you discover that people—and nations—may shatter;

Learning the hard way, you judge that when a blind person leads another blind person they both will fall into a pit;

Learning the hard way, you come to realize that presidents do not pray to God, no matter what they may profess publicly;

Learning the hard way, you reach the inescapable conclusion that neutrons emitted by fissioning nuclei may induce fissions in other nuclei, thereby creating a chain reaction; and…

Learning the hard way, you realize that when the chain reaction begins there will be no mercy.

By Richard Edmondson

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian