03-23-03 @ 7:52 am EST

I missed posting yesterday. I think I had reasons but I can't remember them and my reasons are usually lame, so... But I'll post in here now. And I'll try to do it more often, because that's what a journal is for, after all.

(A note--if I'm posting in my journal, or you have seen I am online but I have not replied to an e-mail or note you have left me, it is not personal. I've been going through this major phobic phase lately and it makes it difficult for me to interact with people. You can wait for me to get around to replying, or you can comment to me again; I don't mind. I do appreciate every friendly comment I have received.)

I just redownloaded IE6 SP1 because I'm so damned sick and tired of that stupid scrolling error. All the suggestions were to uninstall it and reinstall it from a disk, but...I don't know where the disk is, if we have one...and I am terrified of uninstalling things. I don't know how to back things up like that, as stupid as I know that is. One should ALWAYS know and do something like that, but I just don't know how. I can't even seem to do a defragment right. (The one time I did it, fully expecting it to run for like twelve hours, it did it for a few hours and RIGHT at the last moment pulled an error...to this day I still do not know if it defragmented properly or not. I don't notice any performance difference, at least.)

And our stores do not sell magazines with downloads of IE6. So I can't do that. I went to the stupid Microsoft page which is written entirely in Greek, to download it AGAIN, even though I fail to see how that could help. Downloading and installing IE6 is what STARTED this error, in the first place! I'm hoping it was just a little corruption or something and the reinstall fixed it, but I can't be sure. All I know is my favorites here were acting up, so I reinstalled and restarted and now I can see them, but is that because of the restart or the reinstall? I can't tell. *sigh*

I guess I'll find out whenever it starts happening again... :(

I am feeling rather sad and embarrassed for liberals and anti-war/anti-Bush people lately, as I myself tend to LEAN more toward this crowd. (Though honestly, when I said I really had no opinion on the conflict, by now I don't. I just do not care. You can poke and prod me with pro- or anti-war reasoning and I will just yawn and go find something to read or some wallpapers to look at. Personal attacks beat the concern out of me.) But lately I have been seeing the liberals/pro-peace people (I will just call them all liberals for the rest of this entry even though that is a misleading term, all right?--I hope you know what I mean, I mean those who do not agree with Bush) act just as viciously as the conservatives (and by THAT, I mean the pro-Bush people). Some of them are espousing violence, hoping that certain people die, wishing that they could kill these certain people themselves (I won't go into detail as I have written to this person before and recognize their right to their opinion--I just couldn't believe they were saying it), saying that maybe God deemed this should happen as a lesson to the pro-war people, lambasting the conservatives, calling people who agree with Bush idiots and sheep...for God's sake...the liberals are turning into the same thing I abhorred so much about the conservatives.

And that embarrasses me. Because I could probably and would probably be lumped into the same category, if I were more vocal. (Which I will not be, for this very reason.)

I understand the anger and bitterness completely. What I'm wondering is, why does it always lead to such hate? There was a time when I used to stand up for my own particular beliefs on this matter, and the attacks that were flung at me angered me no end--but never once have I wished for the death of ANYONE, not even Saddam or Bush. I won't say whether they DESERVE to live or die or not, because it is NOT MY DECISION. I had hoped that even those who do not believe in a higher power such as God did believe that the lives of human beings are not placed arbitrarily in their hands. And I had hoped that those who DO believe in God know that He is ultimately the One who decides what happens. While I understand needful killing, such as combat in war and self-defense, things like assassination and just plain murder...I do not understand these. And when I see my own people--liberals or those who are pro-peace (I'M NOT SAYING I'M PRO-PEACE! Just that I used to be)--wishing for somebody to die, or wishing they could kill that person themselves, it makes my heart sick. When did we all regress to this level? That wishing for ANYONE'S death is a good thing?

(If you had the chance to travel back in time and kill Hitler before he rose to power--would you? My own answer is no. Not because I do not care about the Holocaust--but because we would have no way of knowing if such a preventative measure would work for the better, or for the worse. I know, that's a time-travel paradox and does not really apply. But what I meant to say was that this is one reason why lives are not simply placed in other people's hands, because we cannot know the outcome. Sure, there would be fewer deaths in the beginning if somebody were to just shoot Bush and Saddam, rather than send somebody in to wage war and kill Saddam...but what of the aftermath? If somebody were to put a gun in your hands...and you were to kill Bush and Saddam and prevent armed conflict...would the violence end there? I do not believe it would...not one bit...the result would probably be the same as it is now. Conflict. More deaths. Assassination, and the killing of civilians, are both murder, and both have repercussions we can't hope to predict. Unless it's self-defense, one form of violence is not better than the other.)

I know I am going to regret this entry. *sigh*

I know that some of the people who have wished they could personally kill those responsible for this conflict (it is NOT a war, it is a conflict--I really wish the media would stop drooling and panting all over the word "war" since it doesn't apply) are devout in their religious beliefs...so it confuses me no end. Did I miss something in the major religions and God in fact condones this sort of thinking? I thought He was supposed to be a God of peace for the three major religions (by those I mean Christianity, Islam, and Judaism--sorry for the Buddhists and such out there, I don't know enough about your faith to comment), so when I see these people so blithely wishing for death, I'm very confused. God is used to condemn such things as September 11th, but He's used to condone such things as political assassination. Both things are murder. Is one really so much more tolerable than the other?

Oh gaw, I promised myself I would not write entries like this as they tend to get me in trouble with EVERYONE. Sorry...I'll try to wrap it up. This isn't even what I was going to type about, go figure.

I know I had one more thing to say, but I've forgotten it. Oh! I just remembered. The whole "Maybe God deemed this should happen as a lesson to us" thing? Why does God have to deem anything necessary for us to learn? What happened to free will--people engaging in conflict for their own reasons, thus teaching THEMSELVES? I had thought that God created us and then mostly left us to our own matters as THAT is the only way we can learn. Maybe in the end everything DOES serve a purpose in some grand plan, but how can we know? And is thinking that maybe God decreed this should happen going to help matters any? If anything, that could lead to dangerous reasoning--"God thinks war is good! God's on our side!" And I don't even want to GO near that...

So I guess I'll just sum it up with...until recently, I have never seen the more liberal people engage in personal attacks and spewing vitriol like most of the really conservative folks I have seen do in the past. But that's rapidly changing...and instead of me thinking, "Ha, the shoe's on the other foot now!" all I can think is...have we really sunk this low? How much lower can we get? I have always believed in the right to disagree, but now there is no such thing as disagreement without hate and spite, and personal attacks from the one side, and wishes for vengeance and violence on the other. I don't know which is better and which is worse. Maybe it's good for once to be a fence-sitter.

I can't think of a decent way to end this. Just that if you might recognize yourself in this entry, I haven't anything against you, I'm just baffled by all this negativity I've seen lately. Judging by a response I got to my French entry, some people can no longer differentiate between the person and the opinion...but I won't get into that. I'm going to go look at wallpapers and think shallow thoughts now, as I'm best at doing. Things always go bad when I try to get deep.

And if you want to bitch at me and call me names and such because of this entry...please don't waste our time. Find an item that suits you more to read. I have a new chapter to my fantasy serial and four new chapters to my erotica serial, if you're interested. I even have some new dream journal entries.

ID: 651345 (Rated: PG-13)
Title: Part 7: To The City
Description: Charmian and Francois head to town...but what is this that awaits them there...?
By: Tehuti, Lord Of The Eight

ID: 655924 (Rated: X)
Title: The Ameni Chronicles: Part 62
Description: Djuta makes an offer, and receives an important ally...
By: Tehuti, Lord Of The Eight

ID: 655926 (Rated: X)
Title: The Ameni Chronicles: Part 63
Description: Tefkha tells a pained tale; and Khetai is comforted by a willing Djefet...
By: Tehuti, Lord Of The Eight

ID: 655930 (Rated: X)
Title: The Ameni Chronicles: Part 64
Description: Rithukh'het pines for her missing master as Resikh pines for a lost friend...
By: Tehuti, Lord Of The Eight

ID: 655938 (Rated: X)
Title: The Ameni Chronicles: Part 65
Description: Djuta sets his plan against Nehara in motion, while Mahakhi ponders his fate...
By: Tehuti, Lord Of The Eight

8/5/96: Hand Of Glory & Murder In The Circle

The White Buffalo Whispers & Noir Love

The Walls Are Weeping Blood!

"What I've Forgotten..."

See? Surely those cannot lead to conflict, can they?

Tar...