The World is a Dangerous Place

The world is a dangerous place. And every now and again we are reminded that it is a truly blessed and prosperous nation that has the time and political attention span to worry about some of the inane crap that we worry about…or more aptly, the pretend issues we invent in our politically charged national life that shouldn’t be issues at all.

We have the greatest economy in the world yet other countries are taking advantage of us? We are the safest country on earth yet we are being “invaded”? We have the freest exchange of ideas on the planet yet free speech is under attack? Hyperbolic rhetoric has real life repercussions.

Since last I posted, we have had protests against overly-aggressive deportation efforts, the mobilization of troops in California by President Trump against the wishes of that state’s governor, an assassination of an elected official in Minnesota, and the bombing of Iran by the United States. Set against the backdrop of these occurrences, it seems rather nonsensical that we worry so much about who uses which pronouns or which company seeks to be more inclusive.

If the world feels a bit more chaotic now – more so than during race massacres and riots of our past, world wars and the Holocaust, the dropping of atomic bombs – perhaps it's more than because we forget history. Perhaps it’s because our baseline level of political stress is set to a 7 out of 10 by leaders of both parties who fan the flames instead of cool the temperature. Our national discourse looks like a classroom of rowdy children after the teacher has stepped out of the room. Chaos and order are two opposite extremes. Chaos is the job of nature; order is the job of government. Good government is the teacher in the room. It is there to provide stability, safety, and an environment conducive for each citizen to reach his or her full potential, whatever that potential may be. It hasn’t the luxury of ever leaving the room. But it has. American government has gone out for a smoke, and it isn’t clear when it will be back. And worse yet, before it went out for a smoke it deliberately riled the citizenry into a frenzy, violating its core responsibility. It has turned up our collective temperatures.

Depending on which news channel you watched, you saw either peaceful protestors exercising their right to protest against excessive federal government deportation efforts or you saw paid agitators that warranted a president calling up the national guard over the objections of a state’s governor. You either cringed or cheered hearing one of President Trump’s chief advisors threaten the suspension of habeas corpus and suggest federal agents go to Home Depots and 7-Elevens to round up illegal aliens looking for day work. You either cringed or cheered at Secretary Kristi Noem saying DHS and the military were staying in Los Angeles “to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor had placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.” And you saw your news channel of choice argue the exact opposite point of view than they did for the January 6th riot.

Depending on your moral code of citizenry you saw the assassinations in Minnesota as a vile act that has no place in our society or perhaps you sat at your keyboard, revved up by years of vitriolic rhetoric, and you typed horrific things about how those lawmakers deserved it. There’s a special arrogance in sitting in safety, lobbing verbal bombs, and allowing others to clean up your mess. There’s a special madness in not caring about who gets shot, unjustly imprisoned, or has their lives turned upside down by your irresponsible rhetoric. And there is a special coerciveness in saying things you don’t believe knowing full well that, because you say them often enough, good people who are just struggling like hell to get by will take it for gospel truth and repeat it.

This weekend we saw our military men and women risking all. We saw them execute flawless 37 hour flying missions under the most immense pressure while their families awaited their safe return. Whether or not you think the bombings in Iran were the right decision, can we agree that these are the missions for which our military signed up, not for being trotted out for a parade or sent into one of our own cities to restore the order that would have existed in the first place had our federal government stuck to deporting criminals where caught instead of day laborers where sought?

Because the world is a dangerous place is precisely why government should save its political capital for real problems, not pretend ones.