When Facebook Becomes Blogging

I have family and friends who believe in American conservatism very deeply, and no matter what other kinds of fanatics say, you can't stop loving people just because they believe in bad things. In some ways you love them more because you wish you knew how to help them, you view them a bit like lost souls. Many things, leftist things, believed by other people I love are similarly pernicious, and one day they will be similarly vilified by the 'intelligentsia,' whose fashionable beliefs always change like the wind.

The problem is certainly not that they're evil people, evil is everywhere, it's in everyone, and good people fall into the temptations of evil all the time, usually without even realizing it, and very often mistaking evil for good. The problem is that they believe in simple solutions to mysteries that will never stop remaining mysteries, and believe their solutions apply to every situation. The only solution that applies to every situation is death, and we'd rather not go there, but passionate beliefs that apply to everything are how many people get through their lives. They need certainties, and the more certainties they have, the more willing they are to fight for them. And so because they believe that a solution applies to every situation, there is no action they can't justify in enacting it. And because what they believe is inevitably wrong for many situations, it has a terrible effect on all the things they're supposed to improve, and then when the situations don't improve, they double down and say that some of us haven't sufficiently committed to their vision of how the world is supposed to be. This is how religion ends up burning heretics, this is how communism ends up shooting and starving millions, this is how Western countries end up enslaving millions from other parts of the globe and killing millions more, and this is of course how Hi...., and this is how Republicans let corporations control more and more and more of American life until the private sector becomes the true government of the country who views the poor as an expendable labor force at best, at worst, a nuisance on their bottom line that must be disposed with. The more true believers have free reign to deposit their toxic selves and instincts into their beliefs, the better-natured and nicer they are in their personal lives because their everyday interactions are not beset with the anguish of doubting that whatever they do is ultimately for the good. And if you're not doubting that all the time, there's something deeply wrong with your belief system.

Realistically speaking, I don't think there's a solution at this point, I'm pretty sure the only way out is for people to realize how tragically large the end result of their beliefs are, and we will have to lose so, so very much.