Broken Souls and Who’s to Blame
Emotivism is the attempt to manipulate individuals into a desired state so they will believe and do what someone wants them to regardless of any objective reality. When politicians use emotivist rhetoric, they distort the truth so their audience will believe a more politically advantageous “truth.”
Emotivism runs directly contrary to the human soul. Humans are intrinsically rational in form (even if we don’t always act like it). A well-ordered soul makes careful inquiries into the world and takes measured action based on the findings.
Emotivism bypasses careful inquiries altogether, and distorts measured action into a hysterical frenzy. Emotivist rhetoric, when successful, essentially injures souls. The extent of that injury depends on the degree to which the rhetoric has caused someone to cease measuring their actions by a careful analysis of what reasonably seems true.
Are we surprised, then, when after politicians and the culture of their political brand fills their loyal audience’s heads with hysteria and false calamities that individuals go out into the world and do sub-human things?
Humans are always responsible first and foremost for their own decisions and their level of rationality, but politicians or figures who exploit someone’s laxity for political gain are no better.
Are we really surprised that after years of politicians and public figures saying that there is an “invasion” of “criminals” coming to “replace you” that there is now violence towards the people targeted in that rhetoric? The political American Right has spent years disguising vicious political malignment as “honest, tell-it-like-it-is political incorrectness,” and if you object then you are just oversensitive.
Republicans laughed it off or ignored it when right-wing comment sections were filled with talk of using illegal immigrants for target practice, or when someone at a Trump rally suggested shooting “illegals.”
It’s no longer funny now that we see the effect of that sort of rhetoric on the contorted human souls inflicting violence on a group overwhelmingly composed of good, decent, loving people seeking a better life for their family.
There may not be sufficient reason to let in everybody seeking to cross the border, but there is reason to think carefully about how we treat them while they are at our door, and how we treat the people who look like them who share our country.
This isn’t about political correctness. safe spaces, or even just common decency. It’s about preserving the integrity of our own human souls and preventing the horrors that happen when we fail to do so.
Insist on calm, measured public discourse. Insist on careful thinking and accurate characterizations. Shame any politician who seeks to whip groups of people into a frenzy against another group of people for political gain.