Good and Evil
Abilio James Acosta, better known as Jim, is an American broadcast journalist. He is 50 and is now an anchor and the chief domestic correspondent for CNN. He became news himself after a White House press conference on 7 November 2018 when his press pass was suspended, and which had resulted in litigation – CNN vs. Trump – but which lawsuit was dropped by CNN after White House restored his credentials with conditions. In his broadcast on YouTube today under the catchy title “It’s evil”, he questioned why America was building a nation of bullies and the bullied, using recent film clips on protests and street violence against vaccinations across his country, from California to New York, and drawing on incidents arising from the January 6 what he called an attempted coup with more film clips on Trump and what he said after he had been out of office. He concluded that what Trump had been doing or was trying to do was evil, and went on to say that it’s evil for those who stood beside him and thereby displaying full and unconditional support for Trump and what he tried to achieve, which plainly was to regain White House in January 2025 if not in 2022 or even before.
I have always said that I have no stomach for politics; but in this day and age, the average informed person needs to be aware of politics and take a view if not a position on matters and issues which affect the world in which we live, which seems to be getting smaller, such that whatever happen outside one’s normal comfort zone tend to loom larger than what they seem.
Frankly, America is divided and no longer a united nation. Very few informed people would disagree with that. In numerical terms, the country is divided into two halves. Based on Wikipedia, 66.1% of the estimated 240 million eligible voters had cast their votes in the 2020 presidential election, or 158 million. Biden received about 81 million votes, while Trump about 74 million, with the rest of the 3 million going to other candidates. Trump and his supporters in the Republican Party are still arguing that Biden had stolen the last election; and these 74 million voters would continue to rock the government and the country, hoping for hope that Trump would lead them to the next election victory. And it can happen, and when it does, as Jim Acosta had asked, what flag would Trump drape over the White House. In contrast, China with 1.4 billion people has never been so united and its people are speaking with one voice supporting the ruling party and the government.
Once again, I wouldn’t care an iota what happens to a country which takes pride in breeding bullies and which ostensibly has been developing foreign policies seeking to ring-fence China’s continuing development and its influence in the international scene. Indeed, a friend had been saying tongue in cheek that he wished Trump had stayed in the White House to continue to mess up his country. My friend could be right, but that would not be a healthy scene for the world in the long run and indeed it would be evil if the world allows someone evil or evil elements to have continuing control of the world’s strongest country and rule over its domestic and military resources.
Western culture, philosophy or religion, from which most of us were brought up, often put good and evil as a dichotomy, such that the good would always triumph over the bad or the evil; and history is full of such examples that the good always win in the end, even though it may take a long time for such to happen. But let me quickly add that histories had been recorded by the ultimate winners so that one might never know what really happened in between. In contrast, Buddhism has put good and evil as part of an antagonistic duality, both of which could only be dealt with, or as some optimists would say could be overcome, through achieving Sunyata or loosely, through recognition of both as emptiness. It is another way of expressing a fundamental Buddhism concept that we live in a world of impermanence, with plenty of sufferings. In the final analyses, we need not or we should not worry over things around us too much. Things would happen when the conditions conducive to their being happened are around in the right portion, in the right place and at the right time. Which fits in rather well with Matthew 6:26 – Look at the birds in the sky! They don’t plant or harvest. They don’t even store grain the barns. Yet your Father in heaven takes care of them. Aren’t you worth more than birds?
Su just texted that she was coming back from the wet market with some goodies, having spent another day with his father and brother in the hospital, listening to the doctors and taking his father back to the YMCA Hotel. I would await her debriefing. In the meantime, the sky has cleared up; but the Observatory has promised more weather systems coming up. We would see; and I hope to talk to you again.
