How close can I get to being an unfair jerk of a jackass?
I'm worried that I could too easily get in touch with my Inner Asshole, and let it have access to weapons like in that final-season episode of Battlestar Galactica where one-eyed Saul Tigh is walking around with two machine guns. Ah: be a Blazing Asshole. (Which should be a medical condition.)
Part of me wants to yell. (I did yell tonight, seeing a lot of bad driving as I drove past the Lloyd Center Theater, out of which was streaming A Lot Of Traffic with some cars going where they shouldn't go. I actually considered extricating myself from this traffic in a way that would've kept me out of the way of other cars, but also had the drawback of being illegal. I didn't do that.)
Part of me also wants to say to certain people "If you're not going to be fair, I'm not going to be fair." That part of me wants to then be too loud, be too argumentative, mischaracterize what they believe, try to make them feel bad about it or at least annoyed.
But that would make me feel bad or at least annoyed.
And I'm already too easily annoyed.
In my Virginia Beach years (I lived there from 1982 to 1984), my young neighbor Heather would call things "rude, crude and unattractive." My being an asshole would be rude, crude and unattractive. I do not wish to be any of those.
But sometimes it's tempting.
But but it can be like craving a certain food: usually after I eat some food I've craved, I'm left thinking I craved that? I have the feeling that being a jackass would, ultimately, make me feel worse. I'm not wired to feel better by yelling at people, even if they deeply need to be yelled at. At that point, why should someone listen to yelling? Why should someone listen to belligerence?
Yeah, I'm gonna try to keep being a good, fair person. Doing so will still, somehow, piss some people off. There. I'd be an asshole by proxy.