By the author of Be Ready for Anything and the online course Bloom Where You’re Planted
The Washington Post recently published an article about Dr. Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. It started off mockingly, describing Carson’s theory that the movie The Purge could easily become really given a specific set of circumstances.
If you aren’t familiar with it, The Purge franchise is a series of movies that take place in a dystopian not-so-distant future. In that future world, things are pretty similar to how they are right now – there aren’t any flying cars or AI robots serving breakfast – except for one night a year.
And on that night, people can commit any crime without worry of punishment. Anything they do that night is legal, there are no first responders to save the victims, and there won’t be any court cases later.
It was Christmastime in Washington, and Ben Carson couldn’t stop talking about the apocalypse.
“Did you know,” the secretary of housing and urban development asked his acting chief of staff, Deana Bass, at a Capitol Hill holiday party, “that if North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon into our exosphere, it could take out our entire electrical grid?”
Bass shook her head.
“What’s that movie where there’s complete lawlessness and anarchy for one night a year?” Carson said, calmly resting his right hand over his left. “ ‘The Purge’! It will be like ‘The Purge’ all the time…” (source)
And honestly, he’s not wrong. There are a lot of people out there who seem like they’d salivate at the chance to off their neighbors without any repercussions. One of the movies, The Purge: Election Year, seems particularly timely after the vitriol of the last presidential race.
Crimes are becoming more shocking and brutal
We have reached an era of extreme brutality and virulent hatred that I certainly haven’t seen in my lifetime. Recently, I wrote an article based on the essay of Sir John Grubb about the end of empires and discussed unfathomable crimes.
Crimes are becoming more horrific and mindboggling. A 17-year-old girl was trying to walk home through a “no-go zone” in the UK and was sexually assaulted 3 separate times in one hour. A man in Pennsylvania tried to strangle his girlfriend to death because she changed the passcode to the IPad. A Georgia woman murdered her two toddler sons by putting them in the oven and then video-chatted their father.
A Hollywood fixture has been accused of assaulting and harassing dozens of women, which led thousands of other women to share their horror stories with a #MeToo hashtag on Twitter. I have seen report after report recently of teachers having sex with their high school students.
And things have become even more horrifying since then.
Just in today’s headlines, I saw:
- Man tells undocumented immigrant to stop peeing at bus stop, gets stabbed in neck
- Man, 48, ‘tried to buy an 11-year-old girl for $250 and meth ‘so he could impregnate her and keep the child’
- Las Vegas police hunt gunman who has killed two homeless men as they slept and injured two others in a shooting spree over the last nine days
- Little Barbies: Sex Trafficking of Young Girls Is America’s Dirty Little Secret
- Man sentenced for raping 3-month-old and filming it
And those crimes are a drop in the bucket. There are awful tales of such severe animal cruelty that I can’t get the headlines out of my mind. Tales of child abuse so mindblowing that it seems like they can’t possibly be real pop up every single day.
Complete disrespect for the political beliefs of others is now not only the norm, but it’s praised. People can lose their jobs because they voted for the “wrong” candidate. Cars with certain political stickers get targeted for vandalism. People are actually killing one another over politics. This is no longer about discourse – it’s about shouting over the people with different views.
In light of this environment, if it was totally legal to do away with people who were vocal about their different political philosophies, how far of a stretch is it to think that Dr. Carson is right about the potential of a Purge? Good people love to say how they would not participate, but if someone came for you and your family, you’d have no choice but to commit acts every bit as brutal as your attackers in order to survive.
When will it end?
Certainly, no time soon if we keep lumping people together because of who they voted for and assuming that we know everything about them based on the sticker on their back bumpers. We’ve had deeply controversial elections before and we managed to get past it, but when we generalize, we take away the humanity of the people we criticize.
When all we do is group people into “evil Republicans” and “crybaby Democrats” we miss the finer qualities of these people. And there ARE good qualities in just about every person, no matter what their political beliefs are. Even if you think someone is delusional, it’s important to try to understand the position from which they developed that perspective.
One has to wonder what it will take to bring us together. Dr. Carson strikes again with a movie reference.
…“There’s never been a time in the history of the world where a society became divided like this and did well,” Carson said as a crowd — including an off-duty New York Times reporter, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, a slew of representatives from housing nonprofit organizations and old friends from his presidential campaign — circled him. “And we don’t really have a reason to be fighting each other. There was a movie some years ago, a Will Smith movie called ‘Independence Day’ . . .”
With his soothing, story-time cadences and heavy-lidded gaze, Carson proceeded to hold forth on how Earth’s near-annihilation laid bare the superficiality of all the world’s strife. If only, he argued, people realized that the fate of humanity hung in the balance, then Palestinians and Jews, or even the United States and Russia, could be “like best friends.” (source)
How can we help each other from a place of scorn and derision? How can we come together when we deliberately divide ourselves every single day?
Let’s hope it doesn’t take an alien invasion or epic disaster to make us mend fences. The time is coming when we’re going to need our neighbors and they’re going to need us. Hatred breeds nothing but more hatred and it’s only a matter of time before Dr. Carson is right about that whole Purge business.
I just finished a book that ties in quite well to this article. It’s one of the all-around best titles I’ve read recently, and I recommend it zealously, in light of the times:
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307455777/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_jYZEAbSBDHGPM
As far off as an official purge is I say it’s over population and a lack of respect for life and community. People just don’t care..it’s sad. Ben Carson is one of the most incredible people to have walked the earth. He has a peaceful calm and a deep insight of wisdom about him if you ever get to hear him speak do so.
I don’t completely agree with your assessment of over population. I believe people are just too concentrated into certain areas. There is enough tillable land here in the US for everyone to have an acre and a half. The land is just in the hands of the few(er). Studies have shown that when,even, rats are concentrated in an area too small for their numbers, they become more nervous, anxious, and violent. Fear breeds anger, anger breeds violence, lashing out. And for the most part, people lash out at the wrong things, and the wrong people; those whom are orchestrating events, and engineering ‘us vs them’ type scenarios. But, yes, there is a lack of respect overall, but I refer back to what I have written.
There are horrible crimes being committed today more than ever because the Gestapo are too busy rounding up minor non violent people on stupid drug charges. They do this because there is little risk they, Gestapo, will be hurt or harmed. PLUS Carson is stupid thinking that it or will happen. If the American sheeple would get a set and stand up to and defend people by any means, crime would go down. The American sheeple are so brain washed by government and the MSM, they will do what they are told and watch this country become what their lord and god said “A shithole country”
Don’t you think it’s the exact type of language and hostility that you are displaying here that is driving this whole thing? We don’t have a gestapo, Ben Carson is not stupid and we don’t have a God that says “shithole”. Wake up and take a new approach. Don’t be like everybody else. Stop feeding into the hatred.
Well said and I completely concur. Another word that can be used as well as Gestapo is Kakistocracy(the worst elements of society running that society). People have become what zombies, what their “lords and gods” have indoctrinated and engineered them to become. I agree, standing up for one another and take our liberty, autonomy, self determination, and power.
There are a multitude of reasons why we think (in general) we are different, rather than we all are one. This is all part of the evolution of the human species that has been going on for some time now. We are all one. We are all connected. What we do to one we do to all and we do to ourselves. That time will come when we evolve and understand this. WHen we don’t use the media, religion, race, or whatever our excuse is, to divide us, but rather chose another course. But first, in order to evolve, we do have to go through this very harrowing time. Not all will make it. Continue to try to be honest, have integrity, and even if you believe in goodness when you are not surrounded by it, don’t give up. It is not the easy path. And remember, you do have the right to defend you and your loved ones when necessary.
Very well said, Daisy.
Excellent article.And I wouldn’t put it past the kakistocracy psychopaths to create a ‘Purge’ type of environment or, dare I say, Holiday?
My dear, we are directed to pray for the peace of Jerusalem even though it will never happen on this earth until Christ Jesus returns.
The same holds true for the atrocities your articles mentions. The best we can do is to love and care for people physically, but most importantly, share with them the only thing that really matters in the long run, the ONLY thing that matters – to spiritually open their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Amen and right on for all the above comments!