The press is rabid, tensions are high, and people are armed to the teeth. If we are not prudent, the United States could drift into an insurgency that could last a hundred years.
As you might imagine, I have a wide variety of friends, many of whom I have known for decades. Catholic friends, protestant friends, Jewish friends, Hindi friends, Buddhist friends, conservative friends, liberal friends, libertarian friends, gay friends, straight friends. A lot of friends.
Now that I have gone through this standard inventory, which is generally used to inoculate the writer against claims of potential bias and to establish them as an open-minded and objective observer; I will further state that I am 100% biased and have little to no objectivity on the subject about to be discussed. So there you have it. You've been warned.
The subject of course being zealotry, and the fact that the inventory of friends listed above counts among them zealots of every stripe and creed. It seems that everyone today is a zealot, and every zealot is utterly convinced that their life, property and standard of living - nay - their very existence - hinges on the absolute and complete subjugation of everyone else to their zeal and world-view.
This of course has not happened in a vacuum. For decades our so called "culture war" has preyed on identity as abundant game for votes. To carry that analogy further; the dark forest of identity politics has been so over-hunted, that there is hardly an objective magpie left in the woods to bag.
All of this is still relatively mild. Free societies always have zealots. Temperance League people, suffragettes, abolitionists, New Dealers; the United States has always had a cache of activists driven by a "higher" purpose. The significant difference now however, is the belief that the political situation is so bad, that whatever happens next week will cause a rift so deep, so severe, that anarchy and civil collapse are unavoidable. And these are not fringe people I'm talking about. These are reasonable professionals who are stocking guns, ammunition, and food for the duration.
In the daily edition of The Socratic Review today, we ran a story from yahoo! News entitled: "U.S. Voters Agree on One Thing: They'd Feel Better Owning a Gun". Among the many
ladies mentioned was Toni Jackson (pictured) who looks about as likely a gun owner as the local Sunday school teacher.
In one interview note from the piece, a woman named Ann-Marie Saccurato cited that her decision to buy a gun went back to an evening she was eating dinner at a sidewalk cafe in Delray Beach, Florida - and a Black Lives Matter march passed by.
It takes only one person to incite a riot when emotions are high, her mind wandered.
And that is certainly true I suppose. But are we to divine from Ms. Saccurato's thinking that when that hypothetical riot broke-out, that Ms. Saccurato was going to spring from her cafe chair, reach into her purse, and start sniping at rioters? Was she just going to snipe at the one's directly threatening her? Is she just going to wildly wave the firearm and hope for the best?
Likewise protecting property. There is no end of militant people posting various rants every day who keep saying things like: they are going to"stand their ground" and "fight to protect freedom", and"guard their homes and families", and"fight for what is right!". These are all noble sentiments; passionate and patriotic. They are also as utterly unrealistic as Ms. Saccurato holding-off marauding rioters with whatever firearm that will discretely fit in her beaded, Delray Beach purse.
As pointed out in an article published in Raw Story today entitled: Experts fear America is on the brink of civil war: ‘Millions of people are actively prepared to murder their countrymen’, it is doubtful many of these"patriots" have even remotely contemplated what it entails to take a human life. But not for want of trying. Certainly video games have de-sensitized some to the more ghastly aspects of the act. But whatever mental preparation Ms. Saccurato and her peers, or the wannabe minuteman and his peers might think they have, taking a life is no joke; it is a dire and traumatic thing, and few if forced to do it, will ever do it a second time, no matter how much they feel threatened.
This reality, coupled with the obvious maxim that there is no absolute right (especially when it comes to murder) sets up a dangerous game indeed. For those who feel disenfranchised (both sides) powerless (both sides) disenchanted (both sides) bitter (both sides) disposed (both sides) hopeless (both sides) and existentially threatened (both sides) what you have is a perfect storm of ideological and dogmatic insurgency, not merely sectional or demographic revolt.
This is not to say we should allow lawlessness. At some point if civil authorities are not able to maintain order, those with some military and policing experience should form a well-regulated militia with all the training and discipline that goes with it. A person must be trained to kill. It takes much drilling and desensitization to overcome the natural tendency to protect and promote life. But battalions of untrained zealots waving arms and bartering canned goods, or picking off rioters who draw too close to a cheese tray and a glass of White Zinfandel at a sidewalk cafe in Florida, is not what we need.
As long as there has been language there has been myth regarding the destruction and judgement of the world. As a Roman Catholic, I perhaps have a reading of Revelation a bit different from my Catechism as I recall it. When I read Revelation, I see the horrors and judgements not caused by God - but by man; the end result of the choice of free-will over subservience to a higher power that was made in Eden. We have it in our power to make the world what we want it to be. We can fulfill any prophesy we choose.
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