Cute, I suppose, when we are kids and it's a matter of taking a cookie because "Well, mom didn't say we couldn't take a cookie from Aunt Thelma's cookie jar right before dinner, just the cookie jar at our home!" Not so cute when you realize that a large percent of our nation's government, business and churches are run - or run into the ground - on this same cynical principle.
I'll be taking three examples, one for when some in government pull this, and also for when some in business or churches do. Some may dislike this or that example, but the examples are just examples, it's not about whether you are in favor of any of them or not in favor of any of them. What's being put across here is the cynical principle of "Since I can't get my own way legitimately, I'll pretend that I think something is okay when I know it is not, and by the time I'm caught - if I'm ever caught - I'll have already ate the cookie!".
 |
| "Blah, blah, blah, your favorite cause, blah, blah, blah." |
The game then was to play that the men who had trained in the law for seven years and built a career on knowing the Constitution of the United States of America were too stupid to know that flag burning is a form of expression. That a Constitution that was only to delegate some powers, and that made no mention of flag burning, and that further in the 1st and 10th amendment acknowledged such expression as a right, some how permitted this new law.
And so it was perfectly okay to pass a law against flag burning, because they "honestly" thought that it was okay.
Result? If any disagreed, they had to burn the flag with ill thoughts (because burning it for a respectful destruction of it was not only legal but hilariously mandatory!), then be arrested, then sit in jail and let the case wind all the way up to the Supreme Court at tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and years in waiting. Before the Supreme Court finally said the obvious that I as a child of 15 had said at the start - that yeah, the Government has no right to keep you from burning your own property and that burning it for political motives is by definition an act of expression.
Oops. Congress's bad. Not that they apologized. They just promptly tried it again, and had that one struck down also. At other people's time and trouble and expense.
Or how about businesses? With an army of lawyers and PR agents and lobbyists they will "honestly" believe they are in compliance with environmental regulations even while pouring sewage and poison into a river feeding into a reservoir for a entire town. Or towns.
When approached by a citizen's group with damnably obvious proof in the form of brown water and dead kids, or even then approached by investigative journalists with brown water and dead kids, or even then confronted by some EPA agent with the same brown water and the same dead kids (just more dead kids by that point), they will deny, deny, and for variety, deny, while continuing to pour the poisons in to the river while saying that "more study" is needed.
They will put everyone to the trouble of a lawsuit that will drag on for millions of dollars and a decade or more, before finally, it will be ruled that yeah, pouring poison and sewage into a river that feeds into a reservoir really is a violation of the Clean Water Act, and that the brown water really is brown and that the dead kids are, in fact, dead kids. At which point - and only after all the appeals have run their course - will they stop doing that.
And start doing it under another re-incorporation one river over. And not realize or understand - "honestly" - that doing the same thing to this new river counts as the same kind of bad. At least not without more studies. And more dead kids.
Or how about churches? Too many in the hierarchy of too many churches will claim to - "honestly" - believe that there is no real prohibition against homosexuality, it's all just translation errors and differing cultures and past bigotries! Any parishioner over the age of seven will readily see that for better or worse that the Bible in both the Old and the New Testament very clearly prohibits homosexuality, but it'll be insisted with a straight face that an openly lesbian bishop is perfectly fine!
Then the rogue local conference of some besieged church will appoint such a bishop, some lesbian woman openly married to another lesbian woman, and pretend that the words in the church rule book that forbid such, and the words in the Bible that forbid such, mean nothing, or anything else but what the words actually say.
And they'll put the rest of the church to the time and trouble of fighting it, and going to ecclesiastical court over it and risking schisms and heart aches and drop offs in attendance all to ram through their own private agenda upon the entire world of believers who joined the church for not agreeing with that very thing!
And after it's ruled "no", they'll re-introduce it another way, or raise another "argument" that they will - "honestly" - believe! "Maybe it's okay if they're legally married!" or "Maybe the words that said, 'don't do this ever' meant that each sub section of the church was to decide!" or "God is Love, so, so, so there!" or "Maybe since there's so much confusion on this we need to have a whole conference on this to see about 'clarifying' the rules!"
Meanwhile that homosexual church teachers and preachers are molesting children, well that little "side-effect" gets shouted down the moment it is brought up. "Homosexuality is not pedophilia!" will be the chant used to bludgeon you into silence, as if they truly don't get that a deviancy from the norm in one area makes it statistically more likely for a deviation from the norm in another. Or that given that most adult parishioners know that engaging in homosexual play is sinful, who else but the children could be sought?
What do all three of those examples have in common? Besides innocents being jailed, killed, molested or otherwise abused?
In all three of those cases, and in every other case in each of those three realms, it is profoundly selfish and profoundly evil men (and women) who feel that their personal wishes are to take precedent over the wishes and well-being of every other person involved. That is how they honestly feel, and it is the only thing that they honestly feel. All other claims of "honestly" feeling or believing a thing are lies, flat out lies, and blatantly obvious lies.
They know that this trick will work because they know that everyone judges others on how they are. Thus as most of us are regular honest Joes (and Janes) we'll naturally assume others are. So when these Little Psychopaths (the kind that don't personally kill) trot out their "plausible" stories of how "this expression isn't really expression" or "this toxic sludge isn't what the Clean Water Act meant" or "when Paul said that unrepentant homosexuals won't see Heaven he really meant we should ordain them" the rest of us are to think, "Aww, gee, do they believe that? Well, golly, I guess we'll have to all go to a bunch of time and trouble to correct them as they bitterly fight us every step of the way!"
Or - and here's the real point - say, "We've fought this issue so long, I can't afford it any longer. Fine, let them jail hot head teens, or poison a whole town or minister to the congregation with his co-husband!"
You, the reader reading this, you pause at the phrase "Little Psychopaths", but that is what they are. Oh, not all who then go along with it are, but those who originally propose it and vigorously proclaim it are. And yeah, some who do go along with it are not tricked or fatigued into that, but have their own little malicious reasons for wishing things to be a way they know is inappropriate.
And it is we, the "polite ones" who not being evil cannot conceive it in others that let them get away with it. If more people were willing to unashamedly stand up and say, "Senator Porkbarrel? You're an idiot and/or a liar. There is no world in which you could have spent nearly a decade studying Constitutional Law and think that letting Citizen A burn a flag to dispose of it is fine, but Citizen B burning a flag while thinking bad thoughts is not fine. You are being a demagogue and a rabble rouser and trying to wipe your bottom with the very Constitution you claim to hold sacred and swore an oath to defend."
Or, "Oh, you work for SludgeCo? Then you are a well-poisoning, child murdering psycho and when you say you're just working to feed your family all I'm hearing is that you choose to feed them by being a hired killer instead of working for an honest living like the rest of us do. All I'm hearing is 'Blah, blah, blah, I'm an order following, baby killing Nazi'."
Or, "Oh, your cousin, son, niece or such is homosexual and they're good people and who are we to judge? So what? Sorry to hear it! But drunkards, murderers and homosexuals don't get to go to heaven unless they repent of being a drunkard, repent of being a murderer, or - oh yeah - repent of homosexuality! As to who I am to judge, I'm the person who Christ told to judge in righteousness in John 7:24! And yeah, that means your loved one is a sinning sinner, who no matter how nice, sweet and gosh darn cute they are - shouldn't be teaching the kids alone or preaching to anyone who has hope for heaven!"
When we fail to say such things loudly, clearly and yes, even "rudely" - as no matter how you say it, it'll be took as "rude" - then we are conceding the battle to all the Little Psychopaths who not content with the stolen cookies of childhood are now going to seize the whole world and with crumbs on their greedy lips say that they don't know nuthin' 'bout nuthin'.
And we have, in the main, failed to say anything. Which is why businesses are doing whatever they please and whenever they please to whoever they please. And why those who want to destroy organized religion strive to keep watering down the message into nothingness - and when it leads to less member retention, not more as they said it would, they respond by watering it down even more! Which is why Congress perpetually makes any law against all the things that the Bill of Rights said they'd make "no law" against.
This is not as inconsequential as you think. Business-wise, it's why that government regulatory agencies are little more than rubber stamps to give an impression of fairness and justice to any chicanery they choose to partake in. Government-wise, it's why more than 100,000 teens have been killed overseas in the past 70 plus years - even though we've not declared any war in 70 plus years! Religion-wise it's why you see women ministers last year and lesbian ministers this year and married lesbian co-wives as Bishops the next year.
It's why the numbers of Christians in America have gone from 98% to 68%. It's why our "limited government" now controls, regulates, taxes and oversees every facet of our lives. It's why Business is King and Unions are co-opted when they're not disbanded.
All for psychopaths using pretense instead of poison, golden words instead of guns, sophisms instead of stabbings. And their goals are the same as any "real" psychopaths. Directing or Destroying. They want to run things, or they want to run it into the ground.
They also have allies. Any who like something being different, but know that it is wrong, or that it would make them look bad to advocate for it, will ally with the smooth talk of the "honest" psycho. They will gladly pretend - for the sake of their job - that the factory isn't polluting "too" much, if at all. Or that their nation isn't really the baddie, it's that other nations hate us for our freedom. Or that sin isn't really sin - when they know someone who does that particular sin, or want to do that themselves.
Those are the strongest allies of those who seek to direct or destroy. Similarly strong - because while less strident, there are more of them - are the ones who just don't want to get involved. They'll then follow whoever screams loudest, and in this culture, that's mostly those who have the sly agenda. They sometimes even see the game, or at least know that the person is full of it, but they're just keeping their head down, they're not there to cause trouble or make waves.
The psychopath and his active and passive followers count for 99% of all mankind. 1% psychopaths, 8% active followers, and 90% passive folk who won't oppose the 9%.
The last 1% are those few who see the game and name the game. And since they use real words like "psychopath" they mostly will fail in waking anyone up, as it is far more comfortable to dismiss them and just assume that to the extent anything is ever wrong, it is only due to "honest" error.
For many of the followers, it may be. For the few yelling the loudest - no.
