I feel like there's more I need to say on this topic, though the thoughts are a bit fuzzy and diverse.
Blogging has always helped with that, so here we go.
First, I want you to take it on faith that every life is precious. Most people probably are nodding their heads in agreement, and yet there's a callousness to the world today that belies that.
We do not act as though every life is precious.
And so I wanted to talk more about the example I used earlier in this series of posts, about anti-vaxers.
We have already seen cases of newborns dying of measles.
Oh, they fudge the data and try to obfuscate it with things like "they did with measles, not because of it!"
Or they'll try to say it was truly because of an underlying condition, as if adding a deadly disease on top of an underlying condition doesn't stress a body out and make it more likely they will die. (Plus there's that nasty fact that obesity counts as an underlying condition, so a good 40% of our adult population always has an underlying condition, and does that mean we can just ignore any death that comes their way?)
All of those arguments are pretty gross and disgusting, because they are all trying to make us pretend that these deaths were not preventable. That allowing treatable diseases to spread does not have any impact on how many people die.
Given how difficult it is to trace how a virus spreads, it is impossible to truly apportion blame... and even if we were, the ones most to blame are probably the ones who had direct contact with the children. Many of whom have probably suffered enough for the loss, to the point where blaming them just seems to be in bad taste.
And yet...
Some children have died who did not need to.
Precious children with their whole lives ahead of them. We have no idea who they could have become, and while the odds are they probably would have been average, isn't that still a life of value? Shouldn't we be upset at such a needless loss? Do we really want to callously and casually accept deaths like this?
While it is impossible to say who exactly is to blame, or how much they are to blame, and it might even be a bad idea to start talking about blame in the first place, I do think it's safe to say this:
We, as a society have failed those children.
Because it really isn't just one person's bad decision.
Something like that doesn't happen unless a whole lot of people make bad decisions.
I say that partly because of the whole concept of herd immunity. One person who is unvaccinated is probably fine, if the rest of their community gets their vaccinations. Heck, that's part of how we protect newborns too young to get the shot, as well as people who for medical reasons can't get it.
It only becomes a problem when lots of people choose not to get vaccinated.
And why are so many people making such a terrible choice?
That brings us straight to the question of our day. Not just with vaccines, either. It's the same question I'm asking when I try to understand why Trump got re-elected.
And as I've said before, the answers are... unsatisfying.
Is it ignorance? Then why don't we, as a society, do a better job of educating people?
Is it gullible fools being led astray by immoral assholes?
Why are they so easily led astray then?
And why are these immoral assholes given free rein?
We again get to that complex relationship between the individual and society at large, to leader and led, to student an teacher. Where the individual does have a choice, does have a say, and can choose not to follow if they're being led in the wrong direction. And yet we can't honestly say that the context of their lives has no impact. That leaders don't influence them, that the media they swim in doesn't sway their choices...
And so I look at those who deliberately spread lies. I naturally can't get into their heads, can't see who is just a gullible fool and who is knowingly spreading lies...
But I think it's clear that at least some people are. That there are influence campaigns that spend money and resources to try and convince everyone that vaccines are dangerous (or that Trump is a templar for God, or other things that don't match up to reality if you question some of the crap getting shared on social media).
I made the comment about bearing false witness applying to misinformation because it seems to me that the Bible - and other religions - try to help us create a society that gets past our parochial vision.
That murder, for example, is terrible for society. Not just for big moral reasons, but because if someone can kill you to get what they want, then naturally someone else can kill them to get what they want, and basically we all end up living in a miserable society where we're never safe and can never be at peace.
Bearing false witness is similar. If someone can just make shit up to get you arrested, then others will do the same, and then we end up living in hell. We end up living, again, in a place where we can never be safe and never be at peace and always have to worry about who is going to make up lies about us.
Misinformation falls into that category for me. It's like poisoning the well. There's this whole 'wisdom of crowds' people have noticed, but that wisdom doesn't work if someone deliberately manipulates it to skew perceptions.
So I keep coming back to 'them'. The people we all think are out there, even if it's hard to point to any specific one of them.
The ones who deliberately and knowingly lie. About vaccines. About climate change. About Sandy Hook.
And here is the challenge.
We're supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves. Supposed to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat or persecute us.
How are we supposed to love people like that, though?
It feels like a cop out. Like you're willing to overlook the very real harm done, like it doesn't matter.
That a young newborn baby needlessly dying of a preventable disease is nothing.
That these failures of society don't matter.
I will circle back to that, though.
Because there is something more to say first.
The ones I just described are easy to hate. But I think, perhaps, the call to love is because hating on them is a trap.
Or rather, it's dehumanizing them, just as they callously do others.
It makes them sound like some cartoon villain. You can picture them twirling a mustache and laughing, or really just sitting in some smoke filled room laughing at the fools their preying on. (Or giving talks about how evil is actually good. Though why he thinks evil is "at least competent" is beyond me, because evil and incompetence seems to go hand in hand.)
But nobody is honestly that two-dimensional. Which means there is a greater challenge.
Why would someone think these things are actually good?
And, since "there but for the grace of God go I", what would make someone like me ever think like that?
When I think about it like that, I generally circle back to the same thing.
These people are absolutely terrified.
You laugh, I'm sure. It seems unbelievable.
But so much of what they do is about control. About trying to force things to go in a certain direction.
And while planning is important, and using the resources at your disposal to achieve your goals is natural, it seems clear to me that these people are taking that to a whole other level.
This is the part I need to take a moment and think about how to explain.
I have talked before about the importance of feedback, especially negative feedback. That we need our after action reviews in the military, for example. Because you can't excel, you can't improve, you can't grow to be better and more competent if you are unable to tolerate hearing when you screw up.
I say that, and I emphasize it, partly because I know exactly how hard it is to do.
I know how bad it feels to head into your annual review, even when you know there can't be anything too bad to hear.
I know how a simple complaint from one of your employees can sound like an attack. Like they're saying you failed. (Even though they don't actually see it that way, and oftentimes just want to be heard. And might even have a great suggestion you can make happen.)
Maybe there are people out there who are bold and brash and can truly brush things off, but for me at least... that's not always true.
However.
I have also learned not to let that knee-jerk reaction control my responses. And I have learned that things are much better when I don't let that happen.
That that employee, for example, really did just want to vent. Or that if I don't take it personally and instead focus on solutions then we fix things and get better, and don't get bogged down in finger pointing and infighting.
This, btw, is exactly why we talk about toxic masculinity. Because that macho 'can't ever admit when they screw up' attitude means they're stuck hunkering down and getting defensive instead of fixing shit.
Screwing up is not the end of the world. You live long enough, and it's practically inevitable.
It's how you handle it when you make a mistake that really matters.
Let me add in one more little anecdote, because it fits the theme and highlights how the military tries to train us.
One of my instructors in ROTC had a cute little story, like many of the cute little stories leaders collect in the military, that may or may not be accurate but was meant to make a point.
A parable, if you will.
It was about how lions hunt. How one will face you and roar, and chase you into the rest of the pride lying in wait.
And the point was that when you're faced with that roar, you're better off turning around and facing that single lion then you are by letting it send you into the waiting jaws of the pride.
Basically making the exact same point about how to handle a mistake, or the roaring of an angry boss.
To bring this back to politics - if someone screws up, but they own their mistakes and face that angry roar, then they can recover and get past that.
I know that seems hard to believe given what we've seen, but I think that's partly because people don't have the patience to let that process happen.
Instead they always try to spin it or ignore it or manipulate things so that they don't ever have to own a mistake. Used to be we, as a society, looked down on that... but I guess the Trump-era proves that's no longer the case.
The frustrating part about these assholes is that you can see how things compound. Because they never actually face up to their mistakes, never take responsibility or ownership, it all just becomes some big game of blame-shifting and finger pointing. Or distraction. Lots of distraction.
Meanwhile, shit still isn't getting fixed. It's even farther from getting fixed than it was before.
They even seem to think that the only reason things aren't working out great is because of 'enemies' or other people, not realizing that quite a lot of it is self-inflicted. And that they were never going to succeed so long as they kept 'spinning' failures and looking to manipulate information instead of actually getting back to truthfulness instead of truthiness.
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