If Americans were capable of collectively moving beyond puberty and engaging unto adulthood, then perhaps their society might drop its irrefutable hangups of the popularity contests and the social circle jerks of their formative years, forbidding them one and all from behaving any better than teenagers inter-personally.
I’d think an actual Democracy would be in favor of vigilantism. If you leave reprimanding in the hands of the authorities, then whoever purchases their services decides who gets reprimanded, why and how it happens. Lethal force and means for lethal force should be illegal, but I don’t think violence would fall into “might makes right” territory, as existing laws only protect bullies, the way USA antitrust laws actively enable monopoly. Instead of rapists and murderers the lower their IQ the better being rewarded with recruitment into law enforcement and military, where they are granted further privilege and entitlements, they would be left to their own resources. Power is maintained by threatening worse than mere violence alone. And no matter the intent of a given collective, urgent proddings for civility tend to settle only for compliance.
It is illogical to be condemned for or to take pride in something a person has no control over, a 2-D atmosphere either way. Profiling demographic bandwagons is divisive, surface-level shallowness. It judges identity rather than the content of their characters. As with voting, to be explicitly for or against someone for their attributes is to ignore the more relevant merits. Voting for someone only because they’re gay, white, female, etc, is as shallow as voting against them just for being gay, white, female, etc. It’s all stereotyping. It can wash domestically where people are scared to death of having no crowd to get lost in, but projected globally and calls for “Death to America” can be taken as a self-defensive reply from those not so keen on being divided and/or conquered, preferring to see the forest for the trees. Not every culture is so codependent on branding or susceptible to marketing strategies or addicted to placation. In business the opposite to monopoly is diversity, and in genetics the opposite to diversity is inbreeding. Ideologies can be no different, and it matters not how uncool maturity might appear.
None of us is made special by commonalities, but for what sets us apart from the pack. I don’t care what the score is, fuck team spirit no matter the colors flown, fuck your candidate of “choice” and your favorite branding irons. Waiting in line is sacrifice but never for your salvation. Enabling so much as a fraction of the machinery is by no means resisting the machinery. Cancer only devours itself when an aspect poses a threat to the sustainability of the greater cancer. If you don’t hate the players and the game, change isn’t what you’re after, only a co-opting of the controls. And a weapon exchanging hands might still be used, so the act is not rising above but stooping down to the same idiosyncratic level. If the one shoe gets holes so easily, then the other foot presents no real alternative.
Not only is violence the lone universal language, but unfortunately it is the only language too many persons might possibly understand. It is foolishly removed to be unconscious of it, to be ill-prepared for rendering unto Caesar. I’ve a taste for bourbon and sour mash both, taboo in some circles, but I appreciate there’s conditions for their usage as self-control is just not a thing most peoples have the constitution for, and for no better reason but that they prefer to shun the responsibility. In regards to trust, respect or even love, when it’s not at once a give and take thing it’s self-destructive, as consequences prevail everywhere but dream, but fantasy, but delusion.
Finding logic to morality is a world apart from declaring supremacy though. Folks claiming superiority have as little claim to scholarship, as they lie, cheat and steal their ways through life under guises of self-preservation. Like Presidents with the best education money can buy reading/writing at grade school levels. Intelligent people are capable of rationalizing horrible things, but only horrible things can come from rationalizing a lack of intelligence. Learning is the broadest pathway to seeing that the world is bigger than an ego.
The problem is when people misconstrue right and wrong for their own personal preferences, and weaponize authority to suit that end. Conforming morality to a singular world-view is the basis for irresponsibility. Academia may have confined itself to yet another comfort zone for those unwilling to address matters not custom-designed for their respective egos, but as a mostly homeless guy I can personally attest that education only requires drive. Echo chambers and safe spaces, news bubbles and social networks are all self-segregated drivel *because* they flatter morality bias. I say people who’ve pursued educations for any reason other than self-enrichment tend to not seek out positions of authority with Industry, Church or State because morality does not require middlemen at all. It’s not morality or scholarship making excuses to lock kids away in cages. The World Bank can afford to let people feel alright with themselves, because all it costs is a lie.
Free speech should encompass legal protections for anything said, but not protections from social ramifications for things said. Mandating opinion one way or the other would still be censoring speech, permitting morality to be misconstrued for rather than against personal bias. Putting that decision in the hands of others allows them to take the blame as well as the credit, when freedoms simply cannot exist without personal responsibility. Maybe society needs no more echo chambers, news bubbles, safe spaces, gated communities or social networks, not when ideological walls are more harmful in the long run than IRL counterparts. Segregation is for personality cult centerpieces, nurturing rather than deflating egos. I’m saying rather than ostracizing the offenders, empower victims to hold their own and to render their own effects. Then you leave the offending party a chance to learn and to evolve instead of martyring them, or empowering self-inclined authorities with settling your disputes like crying to mommy and daddy about how unfair people are for not agreeing with you. By all means punch the Nazis, just don’t kill them, and don’t reserve for yourselves only decisions of inconsequence and don’t insist that decisions of inconsequence carry the same amount of water.
Ideally, 2020 will prove bad enough to enable wide-scale self-reflection that nobody truly wants equality, not when they dream of wielding the whip themselves rather than having it abolished entirely. Any group claiming to seek civility but settling only for compliance drowns in self-denial. And maybe exerting pronouns is abject selfishness while there are starving and homeless in your own communities, issues more visceral for life and death than whether or not people like you enough to cater. But prospects for the majority of people abruptly minding less about what they feel the world should give to them as opposed to what they might offer the world is nil.
They are not Trumps themselves though, because they’ve magically earned that right to play with toys.
If you spend more time and money on entertainment than on helping others, you’re not really a good person, you’ve just been sold on the marketing that you somehow deserve entertaining more than others deserve food or housing. It rationalizes ego, the same pathology as a Trump. The world is fucked because good people are rarities. Everyone rationalizing what they themselves want rather than prioritizing what others need. Power is accumulated not by good intentions but by believing that lying, cheating and stealing for those rationalizations is survival. Serving the ego, your own or your icon’s, is working against everything else, as it favors wish-fulfillment to problem-solving. Why not use your modest resources to end the prompts for escapism instead of engaging the world as perpetual teens? Why even pretend we share in a society?