Cake and dragons

Growing up in South Troy there was all manner of mayhem lurking about if you were stupid enough to go looking for it.

In fact, one of my father’s favorite sayings to his children was, “If you go looking for trouble it will almost always find you.” So, since life was unfair enough and sheer bad luck could ruin any given day, you certainly didn’t invite disaster. That would be foolish.

The other day my wife held up her phone and said, “Did you see this?” It was a social media post by a local bakery that had just done a cake for a Donald Trump fan. I could tell because it was a simple enough cake but up on top was a red baseball cap made of frosting that said “Make America Great Again.” The baker posted this deliberately to shake the branch with the hornet’s nest attached and see if any of them came out to play.

Have you ever messed with hornets? Yeah, not a good idea. Within a couple of hours the photo of the cake and the name of the bakery was bouncing all over the internet and soon there were calls for boycotts and not so nice things being said about the owner; words we can’t print here. Before the sun set on that day the woman who posted the photo had to take down her entire Facebook page.

The last time I checked, it’s still not back up.

So, how do you feel about that? Some of you will no doubt say, “Hey John, she asked of it, just like your dear old dad warned you all those years ago.” And that’s true. But it is also true that she’s a bakery and she made a cake for someone. Now I could argue she was foolish to flaunt it on social media in the current climate we’re in but this is America. And I don’t just think this is a Trump thing.

If she baked a cake said, “Abortions are great” and posted that on her company page, I suspect she’d be getting a similar trip through the public spanking machine.

I noticed all of this happened at the same time that Ellen DeGeneres saw her star fall from the sky and half of Hollywood turn on her. Ellen, a best friend to liberal causes was being devoured over allegations of running a “toxic workplace” and being a phony.

I don’t know Ellen so I can’t intelligently comment on her conduct, I can only judge what I’ve seen on her show and she comes off as nice. What caught my eye though was in the criticism of Ellen more than a few people brought up the time she was kind to George Bush and the show where she forgave comedian Kevin Hart for his past inappropriate standup jokes.

I don’t have a dog in any of these fights, the Trump cake, Kevin Hart, Ellen; I would like to point out two simple things that seemed to be missed.

First this is America and people are free to bake the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. Not without consequences mind you but without being “cancelled” and their careers ended.

Second point I’d make is love him or hate him, Donald Trump’s time will end and we have to move past this angry moment we seemed to be locked in. We have to start liking each other again and forgiving each other and accepting that we all think differently. We used to know that, didn’t we?

I’m so happy when I was younger there was no such thing as social media and every person didn’t walk about with a phone with a camera to document every false step. We all make them when we are younger and sadly, that’s not allowed any more.

I’m a big believer in people learning from their stupidity and growing as a human being. I didn’t care for Kevin Hart’s old stand-up material but today, at this moment, he seems like a good man trying to do some good in the world.

I’d like us to get back to a place where we don’t spend all night on Google looking for someone’s one mistake but focus instead on the thousand good things they do. And I’d like us to be able to disagree on important things and still be friends.

The great G.K. Chesterton could debate someone for hours and find everything that came out of the other person’s mouth repugnant but when the debate was over he’d shake their hand and they could go sit and have a beer. I like that.

Chesterton once said, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragon’s exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

However things go in November at the ballot box, let’s raise a pint and kill the dragon of intolerance, embracing forgiveness instead.