The media isn’t always clear about how they are feeding us information, so I want to make sure this becomes obvious to everyone: all of the terrible events and the variety of people we’ve seen on our television screens over the last few months ARE NOT REAL people or even real events.
There is definitely a real basis with real people and real places, but (like “reality TV”) the pictures that we see on our television ARE NOT REAL. Everything you see is being selected, cut, edited, and remixed so that your vision is skewed to see only the caricatures and places some set of producers wants you to see.
The reality is that only a handful of people who have carefully studied over any one set of events have any idea what really happened, who was involved, or what could have possibly been their motivations. The rest of us are just casting arbitrary, two-cent votes on some nightmare version of American Idol.
This is important because there are some incredibly awful words and judgments being thrown around about the real people these images are based on. It’s fine to debate larger issues (and we can even use some of these caricatures as examples), but let’s leave the individuals out of it and let them deal with their own messes. Our hatred (built up ONLY TO INCREASE RATINGS ON NEWS CHANNELS) does real damage to the real world that is worse than any one of these events.
Please, my Soul implores, take a deep breath, and admit to yourself and your neighbors, “I don’t know who these people are; I don’t know what they really did; I don’t know what I would have done in their situations; and there IS NO POSSIBILITY that I can ever know enough to pass ANY judgement on them.” Only some kind of Universal Divine Spirit (replace with the name of your favorite deity) has the perception to pass ultimate judgement; even then, we’re told, Divine can show some serious COMPASSION, MERCY, and FORGIVENESS.
COMPASSION, MERCY, FORGIVENESS <– The only feelings we should be sending to anyone at anytime.