I hate the concept of “what comes around; goes around,”
partly because karma is a lot like one of the great laws of physics: for every
action there is an equal and opposite action.
Wishing ill even on bullies, tends to create a sphere of
negative influence for the wisher as well as the wished.
So the scandal involving Gov. Christie and the alleged
misuse of the Port Authority for political retribution leaves me a tough place
and makes me wonder just what the hell he was thinking.
We all have to be more than just a knee jerk reaction to
things we like or dislike, and that a large part of being civilized is self
control. A person who resists the urge to create instant karma in others has
real power.
I keep thinking of that scene in Schindler’s List, when
Schindler tells the Nazi that real power is the ability to have it, and choose
not to misuse it, not to give in.
Perhaps I feel sorry for Christie because I am so much like
him in some ways – not in the political opportunistic way, but in the personal
need to tell every jerk I see in the world how big a jerk they are, regardless
of the circumstance.
I relate to that poor fool that put himself in front of the
Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square , knowing that my
personal power cannot possibly match the wrath of the world, but I do it
anyway, simply because someone needs to object to wrong things, even when they
are impossible to stop.
Like Christie, I can’t stop from reacting. This got me in
trouble with countless bullies in the mostly white high school my family sent
me to after I got in so much trouble confronting street gangs in Paterson as a
kid. I recall on very large tackle from the first string of the football team
throwing a school desk at my head (and missing).
But there is a huge difference between me and Christie.
I have no political motivation. My idea of person power
comes out of the martial arts training I had when younger in which personal
strength comes from within, not from those who endorse me. I am like a stone in
a road that the tanks must steer around or go over, but I won’t go away.
Christie comes off at a champion of the people, and has
worked his entire career building up an image of an independent force that will
not tolerate corruption, a phony front that is fed by us in the media and the
misperception that the urge to blurt out inappropriate things is power, when
all power comes from the ability to control the wrath and steer it in an
effective way.
I kept thinking of that video of him holding an ice cream
cone when on the boardwalk at the Jersey shore, and his
chasing after some critic – his state troopers making any physical
confrontation impossible, Christie’s invulnerability paid for by the state.
The problem with manufactured power like Christie’s is that
it can’t last. A man shielded by false pride and misperception becomes an easy
target when the pieces of his armor fall away – such as the missing link in the
dragon Smaug’s armor into which the hero of The Hobbit shoots his arrow.
Christie has been bullying people for several years, scaring
people with a badge he bought with his fundraising efforts for George W. Bush,
and for the most park, none were willing to stand up against him, fearing that
they might be the next target in some bid rig crime scheme his brilliant staff
thought up as the next link in his long term plans to become president of the
United States.
Seeing him whine at his press conference this week,
squirming to get out from the inevitable Karma his pushing and shoving have
brought him, made me realize how unpresidential he had become, and how much
more like the bully who threw the deck at me head in high school, unable to
control himself but always trying to control others – and this lack of self
control that so many found refreshing will deny him long lasting power.
He is not the guy in Tiananmen Square ;
but the tank that ran that guy over. And that is sad.
No comments:
Post a Comment