The Baltimore riots provide the cognitive/moral miser with an excellent opportunity to exercise his bias. He will condemn the evil actions of one party while excusing—at least in a relativistic way—the evil actions of another. And worse, he’ll probably be two-faced in that excusing—admitting that the acts are bad, but then justifying them as “not as bad” as what the other guy is doing.
When he does this, other people respond by hating him. And he in turn hates them back. In this way, people point fingers at one another while they are themselves soiled with the excrement of hypocrisy—that most vile and damnable of sins. It’s quite obvious which parties they think are mostly to blame, for this is where they will exert most of their finger-pointing energies. And is it really any surprise that biased people tend to excuse one group while condemning another?
With their serpentine tongues, they say things like, “Well, I’m not saying that __________ isn’t bad, but what __________ is doing is really bad.”
They consider themselves to be fair-minded, but they lie to do so.
Here’s what a fair-minded person would say:
I condemn the actions of the following:
- Police who brutalize and murder those under their care.
- Politicians who allow police to do this.
- Voters who allow politicians to allow police to do this.
- News corporations who misrepresent the truth.
- People who riot, loot, and vandalize.
- People who condemn some acts of evil while excusing others.
- Corrupt churches who raise their congregants to behave in these ways.
- Corrupt schools who raise their students to behave in these ways.
- Corrupt parents who raise their kids to be evil students, rioters, looters, vandals, police officers, politicians, reporters, teachers, school administrators, church members, and hypocrites.
I have one minority friend who wants to blame all this on the negligence of the majority to protect justice. He is right about the majority, yet he excuses the misdeeds of the minority by counting them as somewhat justifiable, and that is evil hypocrisy.
I have majority friends who tisk tisk at the evil behavior of the rioters, and who will think nothing further.
I have idiot friends who believe everything they hear on the news.
I have idiot friends who believe nothing they hear on the news.
I have stupid friends who blame the riots on agents provocateurs, as if 100% of the rioters were clandestine agents working undercover, and not one of them is an evil Baltimore local who is committing acts of evil on his own volition—-or as if such acts aren’t evil if they weren’t your own idea.
I have stupid friends who just want the riots to stop, but who don’t want to deal with the underlying issues.
I have stupid friends who consider this “the greatest country on Earth”, yet who do zero philosophical or practical work with a view toward making it better. They are so stupid as to say, “America–love it or leave it.” They seem unaware that there is a third option: to improve it.
The problem in Baltimore is this: no party wants to reform himself and everybody wants the other guy to reform himself.
And my question is this: Did they learn this behavior from Jesus and the Bible?
Indeed, there is a lot of information in the Bible regarding this sort of behavior, but that behavior is condemned, and not condoned. But, really, should it come as any surprise that people who will lie about their own actions and motives will also lie about the plain meaning of scripture, or about their commitment to following it?
What you’re seeing here, folks, is an excellent display of the multi-partisan corruption of humankind and of the Christian religion, to which most parties involved in Baltimore will claim to be adherents. And I’m not talking about that stubborn and ridiculous “Christian” myth of “The Fall”, whereby ignorant people believe that humankind has no choice but to be evil. No, I’m talking about that self-evident trait by which humans can be observed to choose to behave righteously in one matter and ungodly in another.
As long as you presume to pick and choose, dear Christian, you are no friend of righteousness. Do both salt and fresh water flow from the same spring? Where is the godly sorrow, oh Christian? Have you forgotten how to be ashamed of your sins? Yes, you have.
Even among those who will dare to speak out against ALL the evil in play, it is highly doubtful that even one will begin the work of reforming the church, the school, or the family to a paradigm of complete authenticity of virtue. And why not? It’s because most people are far more interested in the appearance of righteousness than in the true exercise of it. That’s how stupid and base people tend to be—even though they are free to choose otherwise.
We see the stupid rioter destroying his neighbor’s business, ostensibly to punish the police. We see the stupid police/government again and again from one city to another refuse to hold their own members accountable for brutality, ostensibly because it is better to protect themselves than to protect justice. We see the stupid citizens put up with it all, ostensibly because it is better to persist in dysfunction than to correct it. And we see stupid people everywhere throw the brunt of the blame on someone else, ostensibly because that strategy is the most effective way to ensure our continual decline as a society.
Apparently, the Christians are waiting on Jesus to come fix this. And apparently, Jesus is waiting on the Christians to fix it.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes people to figure this one out.
