The Bell Tolls For Thee (When Your Head Smacks It)

10 min readApr 29, 2020

Because we’re human, we’re capable of transmitting and receiving communicable diseases from one another. That means we’re only as safe as the most vulnerable among our population.

Because we’re humane, we understand that ideas like removing vulnerable people from the gene pool, putting afflicted* people in leper colonies, shunning immigrants out of fear they’ll bring disease, and purposely infecting everyone around you, are all incompatible with living in a “developed” society.

* Note: conversely, there’s nothing unethical about putting people who wear Affliction shirts in leper colonies. That’s just common sense. They’ll steal your zoo if you let them roam amongst us.

In fact, the very least empathetic among us who would support such bad ideas ( Affliction shirt-wearing included) are protected from being murdered by the rest of us as an existential threat to the herd, solely by this same ethos.

Without the reality that 99%+ of humanity is empathetic and ethical, the sociopathic minority would be perceived as a danger to our society’s continuance, and as such, might not be permitted to remain a member of society. Or, for that matter, to remain a member of my favorite club: the Club for Humans on This Side of the Dirt (CHOTSOD).

In America, we’ve always had a few juxtapositions to deal with. The juxtapositions are universal; however, our solutions are unique.

We want as much freedom as we can get. But, we want your exercise of your freedoms to conform to our vision of what’s right, which we often disguise as policy differences.*

* For reference, see (in varying degrees): abortion, gay marriage, slavery, prohibition, legalization of marijuana, prayer in schools, evolution, statues of Baphomet on state capitol grounds, women’s rights, civil rights, immigration, Big Gulp consumption, prostitution, gun rights, interracial marriage, taxation, polygamy, deed restrictions, nuclear waste disposal, and tiger ownership.

Then comes the real ‘murican part:

We all want as much freedom as we can get, but we also don’t want to fund any government programs to support our families when our exercise of laissez-faire freedom predictably kills us.

This is namely because we view ourselves with great deference, and everyone else with great scrutiny.