Let's talk a little bit about human behavior. Some people try to do the right thing because their hearts incline to what's good, and because it's important to them to act responsibly. It's a principle they embrace internally. Even if they could get away with doing what's wrong, they wouldn't, because they value their own integrity and respect not only the rights of others, but also the basic limits and boundaries that help to keep this a civilized society.
Or they do what's right because they love God, and don't want to grieve Him.
Then there are other people. They keep their behavior within acceptable bounds most of the time, but the main reason they do so is that it's not socially acceptable to do otherwise. It's like when George asks Jerry if he's going to pursue a relationship with a married woman, and Jerry says he's not.
"Because of society?" George asks.
Most of the time you can't get away with some of the things you'd really like to do. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't really like to do them. You just figure it won't go well for you if you do, so it's not worth the risk.
Then come those occasions when it seems like the societal bounds of behavior have broken down, and if only for a short time, what is normally unacceptable suddenly becomes acceptable, or at least you have a window of opportunity to do it and get away with it. Normally you can't loot a store or burn a police car, but during a riot you can. Are you the type of person who wouldn't do these things under any circumstances because of your moral code? Or do you go for it when the window of opportunity presents itself?
That brings us to today.
Normally it's unacceptable to destroy or deface property that doesn't belong to you. So if you're one of those people who keeps your behavior within the limits of what's acceptable strictly for your own benefit, you don't destroy or deface said property. But at the moment, the nation has fallen into hysteria over Confederate memorials, fueled in large part by the fact that Donald Trump said they should not be destroyed. You know how that goes. If Trump says something, the only acceptable response is to fly into action doing the opposite as quickly as possible.
So there is, right now, a brief window of opportunity to destroy and/or deface property not belonging to you, assuming it relates to the Confederacy or, probably, anything else someone has managed to associate with Donald Trump. So here we go:
It's been 152 years since the defeat of both the Confederacy and slavery, and this memorial has been standing for a very long time. But suddenly, this week, right now, it is imperative on whatever lunkhead was responsible to tar and feather it. Why? Because for the moment he can become a hero on Twitter for doing so.
Slavery was an evil institution. It's very good that it's gone. It's very good that the people who wanted to preserve it were defeated.
And tarring and feathering this memorial doesn't do a damn thing to make anyone more convinced of these facts. We've already got enough people wasting their time and energy obsessing over the removal of statues, as if such removal changes a damn thing about history or people's attitudes toward it.
Now we have morons running around tarring and feathering other people's property - probably not because of any serious principle concerning slavery or racism - but just because they can get away with it. It's not different than the looters or the burners. The window of opportuntiy is open to be who you really are, so go for it.
It's really not that different from being drunk. A drunk person engages in behaviors he would normally restrain because his inhibitions are down, and he doesn't know any better. Then you have people who engage in behaviors they would normally restrain because the restraint was only based in the first place on the belief that they would pay too high a price for doing what they really want to do.
This is what the hysteria of the week has unleashed. And Donald Trump didn't do it. A hysterical nation that has lost its mind did it.
