Those Fragile Feelings of the Guy Trying to Kill You

Ryan @ Ricochet:

I am not one who is often prone to sentimentalism; in writing, anyway.  I am not commonly moved to tears by political speeches or even events in the country.  When I see a horrific scene of murder or tragedy, I do not feel good about it, but neither do I allow myself to dwell on it.  I may lapse into moments of depression – or have my day ruined – as I find myself losing hope for the future of this country; this happened a few months ago when our local OWS movement tried to stage a comeback by protesting at the doors of our local Bank of America branch.  That did ruin my day.  Seeing real people out there behaving so foolishly, so obviously self-involved and short sighted, and not intelligent enough to grasp the difference between a local bank and “Wall Street.”  That is a depression more along the lines of what a person feels in the 7th inning when his team is not hitting, his pitchers are missing their marks, and his fielders are committing silly errors.  It is the depression that stems from the realization that this team is never going to win if it continues doing what it is doing.  It is, admittedly, a bit deeper than that, as if there are members of the team who are actively trying to sabotage victory.

A few days ago, I found myself in one of those moods that I would more rightly describe as sentimentalism, when mobs of angry villains descended upon our foreign embassies, murdering American citizens.  I refer to them as villains because nothing that they were doing deserves the cognitive dissonance required to label them “protesters.”  A protester, rightly or wrongly, stands in protest against some sort of behavior or activity.  One does not protest the existence of another group of people, as many Muslims object to America and Americans.  To refer to them as protesters somehow legitimizes their actions, and I therefore refer to them as villains.

My immediate reaction was similar to a reaction that I had this morning as I assisted an inmate who was accused of malicious mischief.  He had broken into a car and taken two things:  the registration, and a garage door opener.  Neither judge nor prosecutor seemed to notice, as this young adult sat smugly in his chair, what I noticed, which was that this crime was committed with the express purpose of enabling another (far more serious) crime.  The registration was to provide an address, and the garage door opener was to provide access for a residential burglary or car theft.  I represented this person (as is my job) competently, giving him sound advice and assisting him in achieving the “best outcome”.  But the non-attorney who lives underneath the suit was filled with anger, thinking of my family, envisioning the 16 gauge that would be pointed at this person’s head if he ever stepped into my home with a stolen key.

This is the feeling that I got when I heard about the mob in Egypt that murdered our ambassador and drug his dead body through the streets.  My immediate reaction was the thought that we, as a country, need to finally say enough, already, and squash the mob.  My reaction upon reading a statement released by our own government was one that leads me to that emotionalism that typically finds no home in my little essays:

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