Alec Baldwin puts sugar in his doorway, goes ballistic when he attracts army ants

Alec Baldwin is an interesting guy. He can call a tabloid journalist a “toxic queen” who he plans to “f**k up,” on the digital playground and not think twice about how that might be interpreted by civilized adults. He could tell a guy that he’s going to “put a boot up your a**” before recanting with “but I’m sure you’d dig it too much,” — and then pay no mind to the fact that he sounds like someone you’d find behind bars for assaulting gay men after closing time at the local pub.

Reason’s Nick Gillespie put out a great piece on why Baldwin really dislikes Twitter, noting that it is the democratization of media — the ability to talk back to the elite — that really bothers actors and actresses, politicians and power brokers. I agree on many levels, but I think there’s another issue at work that is worth exploring.

First, from Baldwin’s interview with Gothamist:

Twitter began for me as a way to bypass the mainstream media and talk directly to my audience and say, “hey here’s a show I’m doing, here’s something I’m doing.”… But I realized it’s something I’m not really… it certainly isn’t worth the trouble. Rosie O’Donnell is on my podcast this week, and she said that she’s getting off of Twitter, and I said “God, I was thinking the same thing.” I said “you just end up absorbing so much hatred.” You get these body blows of all this hatred from people who… their profiles are almost identical, like “tea party mom, I love my job, I love my kids, I love my country #military #guns” and there’s a screaming eagle in the background of their profile, grasping some arrows and tanks rolling in the background and they all want to tell me how much they can’t stand my politics. And I go, “OK.” What kills me is these are people who want to put me out of business, so to speak, as fast as they possibly can, but they don’t want to put BP out of business, who turned the Gulf of Mexico into a cesspool…

Alec Balwin views tea party individuals as, essentially, bugs. Ants, if you will. Angry army ants that eat away at him. But is that true? And if so, who is really to blame? I make three assertions:

1. The size and scope of your life is up to you. Therefore, if you spend all your time trying to stop insignificant ants you will spend most of your time looking at the ground instead of reaching for the stars. If someone is truly not worth your time, you ignore them and concentrate on the bigger picture.
2. You are a magnet for that which resides inside your heart and soul. It is really that simple. If you are angry, you will attract angry people. If you exude happiness and joy, you will find your arms welcoming happy and joyous people into your life. Alec Baldwin is like a man who covers his front doorstep in sugar and then wonders why he is being overrun with ants.
3. When you live your life trying to find lasting happiness — real happiness — through the collective approval of the population, you will always fail. There are billions of people, each with their own hearts and minds and desires. They are often fickle. They are often mean. They are often confused, and  some of them simply enjoy being contrarians. On a grander scale, those who seek political solutions through complex rules and regulations find themselves equally as frustrated. If a man can’t even get his simple cat to stop clawing away at the toilet paper when he turns his back for an hour, why would he presume heavy-handed regulations would make the spirit of his fellow man obedient?

Let us also concentrate on Alec’s assertion that he is “absorbing hate” from “tea party moms” who admit to loving their kids, their jobs and their country.

For the record:

• We only absorb hate if allow ourselves to become sponges for it. Each and every one of us has the power to choose to project love or hate into the world. We can thrive off positivity or negativity. Alec has chosen to project anger, and for whatever reason he acts surprised when it boomerangs back on him. Sadly, he has thrived off it for years and managed to convince himself that is not the case.

Instead of mocking and denigrating mothers who love their country, Mr. Baldwin would be better served by either a.) ignoring them or b.) trying to understand where that love comes from so that he can better articulate why his vision for the world is more in tune with their deepest desires than a cursory glance might give. Alec has within him the power to stop the cycle, and once he understands that he will be well on his way to a healthier happier life.

I wish the best for Alec. I do not hope to put him “out of business,” and on the streets, but it is hard to support his artistic efforts when he carries on like a belligerent buffoon. It is clear that whatever demons have hounded him throughout the years, he has yet to shake them all off. However, the media would do him a huge favor if it held everyone equally accountable for their actions; right now they use kid gloves with liberal activists and tire irons against conservatives and random celebrity chefs.