Today is the Feast of All Saints, a Catholic holy day that has always held a special meaning for me. I can't really say why but this has long been one of my favorite days of the year – for me it marks the beginning of the time of cold, quiet contemplation. Over the weekend I spent a lot of time thinking about what is going on in this country of ours. I watched Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity and I got into a few discussions with people that left me wondering what in the world has happened to some people's sense of right and wrong. Making excuses for thuggery, demonization, character assassination, and just down-right hatefulness is hard for me to imagine.
Friday I got into a discussion with a man a couple years older than I am, a professional man with a family and a career, who was defending the person – I hesitate to call him a man – Tim Profitt who was caught on tape stomping on the head of a young woman Lauren Valle at a Rand Paul rally. For anyone who hasn't seen the video, and it's hard to imagine anyone hasn't, Lauren Valle is a 23 year old, 115-lb. woman who was participating in some street theater during a Rand Paul rally. She had a sign that she was trying to get the candidate to take notice of and she approached his car, along with many others, and thrust the sign forward. She was seized by a group of huge 200+ lb. men who wrestled her to the ground, twisted her arm behind her and pushed her head to the curb. Then this huge guy, Tim Profitt, in full view of the camera, put his foot on the back of her neck to hold her to the curb and stepped forcefully down on her head. There was no excuse for it, she was clearly no threat to these guys but Profitt could not resist stomping on this little woman's head.
In the discussion I was in the guy, let's call him Butch, said that she was asking for it and, in fact, she planned it so that she could make the guys who manhandled and stomped on her look bad. I couldn't believe what I was hearing but Butch was perfectly serious. He said he had figured out that this was a “leftist” (key word) plot to demonize the right by provoking them into situations where they would get their butts severely kicked and then make a big deal out of that.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “You mean to tell me,” I said, “that this small, young woman knew in advance that she would pose such a threat to these guys that they would have to wrestle her to the ground, hold her head to the curb, and stomp on her head to protect themselves. You think she planned this knowing the outcome.”
“She knew they'd do their job,” Butch said. “She was counting on the perceived difference in size to work in her favor.”
How can you reason with someone who would even think this way? Well, I tried anyway. “So,” I said, “is that like the little women who deliberately run their faces into the fists of big men so they can claim abuse and make the man look bad?”
He said, “Besides they didn't show the whole thing, did they? If you paid attention there were a couple guys who told him to stop and helped her up, they didn't show that, did they?”
Well, actually they did but I didn't know people were supposed to get bonus points for acts of simple human decency. Apparently Butch thinks decency cancels out thuggery.
This is insane, people, hate groups are on the rise, electoral candidates are advocating “Second Amendment Solutions” (the Second Amendment protects our rights to keep and bear arms), media pundits are making millions of dollars spewing hate and telling lies and the worst part is THERE IS A MARKET FOR THIS CRAP! Who finds this behavior acceptable? Who defends a man who is caught on videotape stomping on the head of a young woman? How did we get this way, for God's sake? Or is that right there the problem? In the last decade or so God, and most certainly godliness, seems to have quit a lot of the loudest religions leaving behind a lot of fire and brimstone dogma and judgment without a trace of godliness.
We need the saints now more than ever. We need honor and reverence for good people who fight for truth and justice and godliness. We need something we have forgotten – decency. So, on this Feast of All Saints, I'm going to forget politics and the hatefulness of those who would justify and defend brutality and focus on bringing some light into our world. We badly need it.
Thanks for reading.
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