Evil Doesn't Look Like Anything
If the Republican debates are any indication, America wants
blood. Not only that, but foreign blood seems to have lost its appeal; for some people, the time of America's great purging has drawn nigh. But yeah, socialized healthcare
is totally one of the Third Reich's scariest political contributions. Sometimes hitting your head against a cement wall can be cathartic. Feel free to give that a try right now if it suits you. I'll wait here. For those of you simply
unaware—or who are perhaps conscientiously objecting to
what is turning out to be an absolute charade—here's what
I'm talking about: two of the three biggest applause breaks
in the debates have been markedly pro-death (the third was
anti-gay). One was in response to Rick Perry's uncontested execution record as governor of Texas, and the other followed a question to Ron Paul that posed the mere possibility of an uninsured man dying from t r e a t a b l e
causes. The a u d i e n c e me m b e r s ' cheers sent
a clear and telling message: "Let them die!" Be it out of
some deep frustration about waiting in lines, or maybe
simply profound boredom, America wants to see bodies hit the floor. It's freaking me out. It's hard to pin down what
we're dealing with here, but I sure hope it doesn't creep
onto Xavier's campus disguised as discourse. With
the political season gearing up, conversations have the
potential to get aggressive. By all means they should
—there's a lot at stake. We should remove the notion
of Social Darwinism from them altogether though, especially when masked by the seemingly innocuous
libertarian fantasy of freedom without limits. I have a theory that we've played a historical trick on ourselves. As a nation, we have positioned ourselves as the enemy
of anyone who adopts the political philosophy of oppressing
their own people. It's the stated justification for pretty much every war in our nation's history, including those Civil and Revolutionary. We then see ourselves as so opposed to
evildoing that the idea of us being capable of harboring our
enemy's indifference toward death — or even, in this case,
enthusiasm — seems absurd to most people. For some reason, when Americans cheer to end people's lives they think they're cheering for things like freedom and justice.
Don't mistake me for one of those nut jobs who shows up at town hall meetings having photoshopped a Hitler mustache on the president's face. Trust me, I hesitate to even use the Nazi comparison—it's just that the parallels are so eerily subtle and for that reason incredibly fascinating. I only mean to say that we would be wise to remember what ought to be the most valuable lesson
taken from Nazi Germany, which isn't that advocating
for strict regulations on population or having no love for big
business should be associated policy wise with the deaths of over six million people, but rather this: evil doesn't wear
a sign on its chest, and it always comes masked by good
intentions. All I'm saying is be careful. Conversation has this tendency of glossing over matters of life and death with the same matter-of-fact tone appropriate in discussions about the economy. This might very well be because, for some people, the two are completely indistinguishable.
Perhaps I'm being too dire, but like I said, the cheering freaked me out.
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