Does injustice exist? Science reports that even monkeys know when they are getting screwed over. If I remember right, one monkey will stop playing a game in which he can see another monkey get a better reward than he gets for doing the same thing. I think this tells us that there is something genetic in us that rebels against discrimination. Let's say, then, the answer is yes, injustice, the capacity to feel discrimination is real.
When a political party refuses to act in the best professed interest of the majority will that be seen as unjust, say when they block laws that can fix the injustice. I would say that would be a situation that would provoke righteous rage.
What are the traditional reactions to injustice that have governed Western society and perhaps others. I think the first reaction is an eye for an eye. You do back to others what they do to you. This is what, I think, Republican intransigence is driving Democrats to do.
But we know that Christianity brought another answer, to turn the other cheek, to try to win the war by meeting injustice by showing what real justice looks like. This is what, I think, has made the West superior to eye for an eye cultures, by appeal to love and human empathy.
But what to do with the perpetrators of injustice keep beating you after you have turned the other cheek. Should one stick to tolerance in the face of folk who will show no mercy?
If I have this right about Islam, a religion that also advocated piece and were continually slaughtered, a different way of dealing with injustice of evil was put in place.
It is simply unnatural to endlessly take a beating or subject a culture to endless slaughter so there was a need for a third way and it seems to me that the principle in Islam goes like this. When faced with a remorseless evil you fight back with everything you have, work to destroy it without mercilessly, but only right up to the point where the source of evil repents and promises to reform. Then you must cease to fight and deal out mercy, giving the enemy just that one chance to live and make good on their promise to reform.
The Christian was is, in my opinion almost inhumanly hard, and the Old Testament way produces endless war. I see the compromise as making the most sense but it isn't easy either. It is hard to practice an eye for an eye and instantly switch to being Christian.
I think Manchin fancies himself a man who can take it on the chin, but I think he isn't very wise. I do not see how, given the actions and the words Republicans give that there is any doubt at all they will not change until they see the Wrath of God that is writ in the soul of monkeys who can use tools and brains when they get fucked over.
This post was written yesterday. Hope it is still to be posted because I failed to do so and is not a DP.
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