Where is the Love, VI - Finale

 I want to circle back to where I started, but first I'm going to clarify what I mean about 'asking the right questions.'

Picture, if you will, someone running for office who asks themself "How do I take care of my people?"

Now, picture someone else running for office who asks "How do I win the election?"

The different question leads to a different focus, and different priorities.

Though not necessarily. If, for example, the first candidate believes "To take care of my people, I have to win elections" and the second believes "To win elections, I have to take care of my people"... then you might not see much of a difference in behavior.

However, if there is a conflict between these goals - if, for example, someone thinks they can win the election without actually taking care of people - then you may see some very different behavior.

This is why I keep bringing up Trump's comment that "I like the numbers where they are" when he refused to let a ship infected with Covid to dock. That statement illustrates, to me at least, that he is much more concerned with the appearance of taking care of Americans than he is with actually taking care of them. 

So let's go back to my earlier discussion on forgiveness and love, and why it's so hard to do.

It's easiest to illustrate this with RFK Jr, who has been pushing anti-vax nonsense as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

First, I would hope that someone in that position would focus on one question - "How do I keep Americans healthy?"

And if you ask that question sincerely, then you will follow where the evidence takes you. If study after study after study after study shows that people who got vaccinated had lower death rates and lower hospitalization rates, than anyone who cares about actually keeping Americans healthy would encourage them to vaccinate.

To continue believing otherwise can only happen for a few limited reasons.

1. He isn't able to update his beliefs when evidence contradicts them (like in the article in my previous post). He is in denial, or irrational, or whatever.

Basically he's incompetent. He has the right goal but doesn't have the capability to actually achieve it.

or 

2. His goal isn't to keep Americans healthy. I'm not sure what other goal he has, though given some of the other things he's doing I lean towards eugenics of some sort. Basically he's trying to get people killed. 

Basically he's malicious. All of his efforts are used to push us towards a result that is harmful to Americans as a whole. (He might have convinced himself it isn't, especially if he buys into some of the bullshit ideas that underpin eugenics, so he may also be incompetent in addition to being malicious.)

I find it hard to forgive either, because he is in an influential position where his poor decisions really do have an effect on other people. People who haven't done anything to deserve it, have never harmed him in the slightest.

If he was just some dumbass flipping burgers, then who cares if he's an incompetent and malicious fool? If he lived on an island with others who believed like him, so that his nonsense never left that island then I probably wouldn't care either. Because they all chose not to get vaccinated, and they'd be isolated enough that maybe it wouldn't even matter. 

But neither is true.

Incompetence or malice? Or both?

And how badly have we failed as a society, that someone like that is the head of our government health efforts?

 I do sometimes try to think about what would drive someone in that direction. I mostly come back to fear.

A belief in scarcity, that there are limited resources, and that there needs to be some way to decide who 'deserves' those resources. 

Or maybe fear of something else, I don't know. This entire way of thinking is alien and abhorrent and I dislike feeling as though I'm trying to excuse it.

Fear, if that's what it is, just basically throws this back in the 'incompetent' column, because you have to be pretty incompetent to let fear push you into bad decisions. (It happens a lot, it's true. I remember when I realized that the South basically let their fear of an abolitionist North push them into kicking off the Civil War, which pretty much led to their own fears coming true. Not that that was a bad thing since it led to emancipation far earlier than it otherwise would have. I just find it a bit ironic.)

It makes me wonder if there was a reason God's messengers always start off with "Be Not Afraid".

Or maybe I'm being too generous, and they really are evil assholes. It'd kind of be nice to know, though I'm not sure if knowing would make any sort of difference.

Can I forgive someone for being incompetent and/or malicious to such a degree? Is that really what we're being asked to do here? 

Hell if I know. That things have come this far feels more like a damning indictment.