Republicans, Democrats, and Thanos

Thanos boasted of how the environments and economies on the planets he had already wiped out were thriving. Thanos had good intentions.

He desired the greater good. But he forgot that a person in a place of power will always be a villain for sacrificing what is commonly good for all people for the greater good of an exclusive group (even if that exclusive group is half of all life randomly selected).

This applies as much to Thanos as it does it Republicans and Democrats. Willingness to throw the other half of the population under the bus physically or verbally because your own half is “right” leaves a person with good intentions and culpability of the same sort as Thanos. The only difference is scale.

Republicans and Democrats may not have the potential to wipe out half of all life in the universe, but maligning honorable politicians on the other side of the aisle, vehemently insisting that they should leave their own country because of ideological disagreements, and consistently lying to constituents for political gain is not “political hardball.” It is villainy unbecoming of a statesman.

Good-intentions unredeemed by a firm grounding in moral principles (undiscriminating concern for the natural thriving of other individuals) are dangerous, counterproductive, and bound to leave leaders in the ugly part of a history textbook.