The obvious answer that sane, rational people will all agree with, is “of course not.” But there certainly was a time when we proceeded to massacre our own American brothers over differences of opinion and philosophy. 620,000 lives were regarded as an acceptable price to pay so that one side or the other could have things the way they wanted.
Even today, many view the Civil War as justifiable and necessary. To others, it looks like an anti-intellectual eruption of arrested adolescence resulting in the bloodiest toddler tantrum in U.S. history.
It’s human nature to justify the things we do. Everything from little white lies to child abuse. For whoever’s doing the deed, it makes perfect, logical sense to them at the time. So today, just such a person felt in his heart that shooting and killing as many Republican lawmakers as he could was logical, justifiable and necessary so that things could be the way he wanted.
We’re increasingly expressing a child-like refusal to accept any circumstance that does not align with getting out way.
Lately, there’s been too much James T. Hodgkinson in all of us. We’re increasingly expressing a child-like refusal to accept any circumstance that does not align with getting our way. We’ve also started framing getting “our way” as literally the only thing preventing the complete destruction of civilization. That’s not true, not even a little. But we proceed as if it were, cheered on and reassured by the echo chambers we’ve established around us to insulate us from objectivity.
This all leads to the most dangerous school of thought ever conceived, “the ends justify the means.”
This spreads silently, surreptitiously, and quickly like any infectious plague worth its salt. The truth stops mattering. The search for confirmed facts stops. We’re consumed by a fever that clouds our ability to challenge our own thoughts. Powered only by emotion, hate, fear and paranoia, we see conspiracies afoot and boogie men lurking around every corner, all aiming to cheat us out of our non-existent divine entitlement to have everything be the way we want it.
If your “War of the Worlds” is a good enough show, there will be people who really believe the Martians are coming.
We’re approaching a fork in the road. We can continue to foster and grow the environment that feeds the plague and drives such personalities over the edge, relentlessly rewarding and justifying fact-less ravings and wild speculation on social and cable. Or we can take this horrifying event today as a reminder that there is such a thing as going too far. If your “War of the Worlds” is a good enough show, there will be people who really believe the Martians are coming.
Which path we feel is the right one to take will reveal a great deal about ourselves to us. Are you a “by any means necessary” type of person, even if that includes lies, off-the-scale bullying & demonizing, destruction of the innocent, whipping the weak-minded into acts that result in death to themselves and others? Or do you live your life, breathe, accept that things didn’t go your way this time, and let truth and facts carry us wherever we’re going next?
620,000 ghosts might wish to tell us whether having things our way really was justifiable.