Sweet Gum Balls of Mass Destruction

When I was growing up in rural Mississippi, one of the many entertainments available to my brother and me was knocking down wasp nests.  This was only marginally safer than one of our other hobbies, manufacturing WMDs capable of splitting hollow trees, but I digress.  (As for you sadists who think stirring up hornet nests is a more enlightened form of entertainment, we may have been dumb, but we weren’t fools.) The whole point of whacking wasp nests was to protect other people from getting stung.  At least that’s what we told our skeptical and long-suffering divorced mother.

Aside from the dubious "fighting them over there in the shed so we don’t have to fight them here on the porch" rationale, the benefits were manifold.  Using sticks or dirt clods to assail wasp nests from point-blank range provided great cardio workouts.  If you were successful, you could get a hundred-yard sprint per wasp nest, depending on how fast you were and how many very grumpy wasps were hard on your tail.  If only we could have known how popular the aerobics craze was going to be, we could have made our fortunes!

Stings, while contributing to the zeal of the calisthenics, were considered minor occupational hazards unless you incurred the wrath of a nest of red wasps.  These large, ill-tempered beasts were relentless when disturbed, held a mighty grudge and moved with a velocity that belied their size.  In short, they were very mean and suffered no foolishness gladly.  We learned very quickly that distance was our friend when dealing with red wasps.

This led to another benefit: learning how to accurately aim a slingshot loaded with a dirt-laden sweet-gum ball.  (For you non-Southerners, sweet gums are trees which bear a round fruit/seed pod with pointy protrusions).  Smart bombs have nothing on sweet-gum balls for destructive power, at least on wasp nests and kid brothers.  Last, but not least, were the economic benefits.  I have no doubt in my mind the manufacturers of Benadryl, meat tenderizer and chewing tobacco are greatly indebted to us.

The mortal enemies of my youth, wasps, possessed a certainty of conviction.  Along comes the young hellion launching the Sweet Gum Ball of Mass Destruction (SGBMD), upsetting their nice little world view.  As was their nature, the wasps would immediately swarm, most searching for the cause of their torment and confusion.  Only after attempting to administer swift and terrible punishment would they calm down, muttering to themselves, and return to their narrowly focused lives, incapable of contemplating why the SGBMD was sent special delivery, courtesy of Slingshot Express.

What on earth, the DailyKos reader may ask, has SGBMDs got to do with the price of eggs?  Being a troublemaker, I frequently lob the figurative SGBMD onto the editorial pages of my local and regional newspapers and into the well-ordered, respectable opinions of those (usually conservatives) who fervently believe they hold the moral high ground.  Interestingly, most of the resulting reactions bear a striking similarity to those of my insect antagonists.  As a student of human nature, I have noted people often do not like having their cherished notions of ethics, morality and fair play challenged.  They instinctively attack the messenger, build and knock down straw men, or pooh-pooh the validity of the questions raised by the troublemaker who refuses to buy into the prevailing conventional wisdom.

Cannon-balling into the waters of blogdom for the first time ever (and shamelessly plagiarizing one of my editorial submissions), I am picking out a suitable SGBMD and firing into the pages of DailyKos:  Progressives should be able to thoroughly explore and rationally discuss the issues of our time and not resort to the sort of antics typically ascribed to our friends on the far right.  The recent diaries/comments on what to do with the South have prompted this lurker to presumptuously (or stupidly) assert civility and discourse should always be paramount here.

The inability or unwillingness to see other viewpoints, debate the questions at hand and work out the particulars is at the crux of a number of the problems in this country.  A dogmatic insistence that one’s particular belief is the only correct one fails to address the various facets of each of these problems.  For example, dismissing an entire group of people because they happen to reside in a particular region of this country (such as the South) or attacking those who do not support a particular course of action (such as impeachment) does not serve the progressive cause.  This, to me, is an absolutist attitude many of us attribute to conservatives.  Resorting to insults, hyperbole or dogmatic rhetoric is not how to respond to the questions which may make us uncomfortable or which may cause us to re-examine our convictions.  These types of responses require no effort of thought and are designed to avoid the heavy lifting of defending a particular position.

Admittedly, I am an amateur practitioner of progressive polemics here in Mississippi (It’s often a lonely, dirty job, but someone’s got to do it).  I also have a fondness for wiping the smug smiles off of the faces of pundits whose self-certainty is absolute, one of many character flaws.  Having said this, I will also state it is a guiding principle of mine that when I offer my opinion to the rest of humanity, I darn well better be able to defend it or admit I was wrong and learn from my mistake(s).  I hold other opinion peddlers to the same standard.

The logical result of applying this principle is that sometimes opinions will push people out of their comfort zones, forcing them to confront issues from a perspective they may have never before considered.  A wise old saw once told me opinions were like bellybuttons: Everyone has one, and they all stink.  Having an opinion doesn’t mean you have a monopoly on the truth.  It is simply an expression of what you think, and a good one should make other people think.