Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.
Saint Augustine tells us (along with Gandhi, many years later) to love the sinner, and hate the sin. Conceptually, it’s easy enough to grasp. Practically, it’s not always an easy task. Drive down the freeway during peak traffic hours and tell me how many folks drive you crazy with poor driving antics. Certainly road rage wouldn’t be so prevalent if most folks managed to live by this rule. However, making the attempt to live this way is worthy even if we cannot always live up to it.
Social Justice orthodoxy demands that we hate the sinner for the sin. Paula Deen famously used the word “nigger” after being held up at gun point, and admitted that she may have said it in other contexts at some point or another in her life. This stain is considered permanent in some sense. Once you use the word, you are forever guilty, as if the offense were like committing a felony. Your record cannot ever be expunged. Forgiveness is impossible. You will be hated forever. You are an unperson, erased like a man in a Stalin-era photograph.
A good friend of mine some folks may know as ClarkHat sent me this link: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/08/my-joe-rogan-experience/594802/
Fascinatingly, the author of the piece does not appear to have a problem with Joe Rogan himself, per se. Indeed, his opinion of Joe is high enough that most of the piece is about the author’s attempt to live likewise, and Joe’s ability to relate to the common American man. Rather, he takes issue with the fact that Joe Rogan would dare to talk with sinners, with the unpersoned. The money quote:
Joe likes Jack. He likes Milo Yiannopoulos. He likes Alex Jones. He wants you to know that he doesn’t agree with much of what they say, but he also wants you to know that off camera they’re the nicest guys. If we all have fatal flaws, this is Joe’s: his insistence on seeing value in people even when he shouldn’t, even when they’ve forfeited any right to it, even when the harm outweighs the good. It comes from a generous place, but it amounts to careless cruelty. He just won’t write people off, and then he compounds the sin by throwing them a lifeline at the moment when they least deserve it.
Once a man is unpersoned, the shunning is supposed to continue forever. You must hate the sinner, and if you do not, this itself is a form of sin. It is, in the author’s own words, Joe’s fatal flaw. Talking to the sinner is forbidden. Forgiveness of the sinner is forbidden. It does not matter if the sin was three years ago, or thirty years ago. It does not matter if the sin was a casually insensitive joke, or a Virginia governor donning blackface in a yearbook. Although we might suspect that Governor Northam may have been given some level of a temporary pass for his Democratic party allegiance. Political expediency may delay your final unpersoning, for a time. Then again, it may not. Courts of public opinion are fickle, prone to whimsy, and as cruel as any schoolyard bully. There is a reason the justice system is not put to popular vote, after all.
His invitation to Jones was indefensible, and his defense was even worse. I had assumed going in that Rogan would explain himself at the top, similar to what he’d done after booting the Jack Dorsey interview. But he didn’t. He went the other way. He promised a “fun” interview with Jones, as if it was a joyful, long-awaited reunion rather than offensive for even existing, and he assured his listeners that “you’re gonna love it.”
Even before Jones sat down, Rogan seemed unpierced by the genuine anguish that Jones had caused the parents of murdered first graders. I won’t quote anything Alex Jones said on the podcast, so just picture a walrus with a persecution complex, or a talking pile of gravel. They got the Sandy Hook stuff out of the way first—Jones evaded responsibility, Joe grumbled about the media—and then they got into what Jones was really there to talk about: aliens, suicidal grasshoppers, Chinese robot workers, that kind of thing. My breaking point was at the 21-minute mark, when Jones apologized for “ranting” and Rogan replied, “It’s okay—I want you to rant.”
Alex Jones is presumed by the author to have caused genuine anguish to the parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims. First, it bears mentioning that this claim is extremely dubious. If somebody doesn’t wish to listen to Alex Jones, he doesn’t have to. I’m not exactly in the Alex Jones fan club, and I generally avoid listening to him. Similarly, if Joe’s interview of Alex Jones starts to cause somebody distress for whatever reason, well, you can watch something else.
Similarly, the author notes that “Jones evaded responsibility.” What does this even mean? Alex Jones was not responsible for the shooting. There are many things one might conceivably pin on Alex Jones, to include those scam supplements sold under the InfoWars brand. But Sandy Hook – and the feelings of the victims and their families – isn’t one of them. To the author, however, it does not matter. Alex Jones is a sinner. He should therefore be unpersoned, and anyone who even talks to the unperson is himself guilty of a sin.
Perhaps a sin worthy of unpersoning as well.
I’m glad, though, that the men of America have Joe Rogan to motivate and inspire and educate them in limitless ways, including how to recognize a moron. Whatever gets the job done. It might unsettle some of us that we must rely on his fans to separate the good stuff from the bad, but that’s the hard work of being a responsible adult in the modern era—knowing what you should consume and what you shouldn’t. We all need to decide for ourselves, but trust me on this one: You can skip the mushroom coffee.
In the end, the author comes around – perhaps reluctantly – to the view I took above. For this I give him some credit, for I get the general impression from his writing that this view was difficult for him. He likes Joe at some level, but he is conflicted about his status as a sinner. But he does explain that you are responsible for the content you choose to consume. Joe Rogan’s time to be unpersoned has not yet come, at least in the author’s view. For now, perhaps, the court of public opinion has not ruled against him.
Yet.
But once the you are deemed have offended the sensibilities of popular culture sufficiently, well, your time will come. There is no appeal, no forgiveness, no coming back from your unpersoning. Once a sinner, always a sinner. Once a sinner, never a real person again. You just become another caricature, a guy in a Hitler mustache, a cartoon villain, upon whom anything may be blamed, up to and including school shootings you had nothing to do with.
Hate the sinner, regardless of the sin: the new mantra of mob justice.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFIRST!
Devin Gordon (the article’s author) was the sort of person recruited to Torquemada’s Inquisition. I hope that’s clear to one and all.
There were those, like Devin Gordon, who called for the imprisonment, condemnation, torture and execution of sinners, apostates and unbelievers. And there were those who gleefully performed those acts as part of following their creed. You will find them today populating the ranks of Antifa and their ilk.
This will pass. But not until those who advocate and perform these cultural ‘purifications’ cause enough damage, suffering and bloodshed that the bulk of society reacts decisively against them.
If you live in a place where the Inquisitors are strong, you need to leave. Now.
If you are even accused of a “sin” by the left then you are guilty and beyond redemption for all eternity even if the accusation is proven to be false. Why is this? Because you could have. No matter how unlikely, you could have. That’s all it takes.
The new Inquisition of the Left is prepping the battle space ideologically:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ten-years-later-the-gathering-storm-of-white-supremacist-terror-is-here
I suspect they want a 2nd civil war quite fervently, as they believe they can win it. They seem to have convinced themselves that they have the numbers, the ‘courage’, the moral and intellectual advantage and the ‘tide of history’ supporting them.
I believe those were essentially the attitudes expressed by the south in 1860.
Michel and TSW,
You are both correct. I also believe the Left will have quite the same rude awakening the South had.
It will still be a woeful affair.
I don’t believe it’ll get as bad as Kurt Schlichter’s “Indian Country” novels, but it will be bad enough.
Not as woeful as my commentary or Hillary’s public service career.
Cripes!
Even the Inquisition allowed you to repent and be forgiven.
The Inquisition did allow you to repent and be forgiven, which allowed you to have a rather quick and clean death, but die you must, they were rather insistent on that point.
You are wrong about the Inquisition.
How so?
Call me paranoid but does anyone else find all these mass shootings suddenly popping up at the beginning of the political season a little to convenient?
Not me. I don’t blame you for being paranoid, though, and consider it healthy in this instance.
As far as I’m concerned, the empirical rise in mass shootings (I say empirical because I don’t know if it’s statistically valid) reflects our society coming apart at the seams. It’s going to get worse right up to the election. It will get VASTLY worse if, as I surmise, Trump GEOTUS wins and the repukes keep the senate and retake the House.
Regardless: I’m expecting more of this to happen, not less. And I am expecting it to be driven almost completely by the Left, both in terms of deliberately inflammatory remarks and the political orientations of the gun maniacs.
Michel,
It sure seems smelly, but I don’t think it’s nefarious. It’s more a function of the news media covering every little thing they can and of course some sickos knowing this and taking advantage of it. I did hear an interesting theory, where the ones who give themselves up and write confusing “manifestos”, are doing it on purpose to watch the “show” and enjoy themselves.
You’re probably right on reflection. It sure is convenient for statist gun grabbers that they seem to show up more at election time. Of course the leftist media suppressing the news of the massacre that happens on a regular basis in gun control havens that are also Democrat controlled cities helps that perception.
I suspect that the blowback on the MSM is one day going to be horrendous.
They’ve destroyed themselves. I don’t see them being able to keep this evil going for another decade.
Leftist Progressive Christians have turned their back on both Forgiveness and Grace. It has been removed from their religion. They are literally preaching the necessary purchase of indulgences in the form of voting Progressive to save oneself, God’s Grace no longer enters into it.
Progressive Christians are Progressive, but they are no longer Christian.
TSW,
The MSM are already suffering blow back. As a matter of fact they (through their own efforts) have put themselves in an impossible place. No one believes them, they know it, whine about it and then proceed to do things that prove they are liars. They can’t help themselves (neither can the Dems) watch them, they all do things that just confirm everyones judgement of them, but they think they are winning, they really do.
Without question, the MSM and the dhimmicrat party are demonstrating that they have completely taken leave of their senses. This is worrisome not just because of the mental health implications, but regarding their subsequent reactions if they are soundly defeated next November.
To emphasize the point – the following transpired just today:
1. AOC and Ayanna Pressley, both members of “the Squad”, are fundraising to help bail out 39 antifa members who were arrested in Boston over the weekend at the “Straight Pride” parade. At least 3 of those 39 actually assaulted a police officer.
(Side note: this reinforces the impression I have been receiving that the MSM and, increasingly, the dhimmicrat party are protecting Antifa. I am more convinced than ever that those who are financing the dhimmicrat party and who own great chunks of the MSM see Antifa filling the role of an American Maoist Red Guard in the future, or perhaps even a Shining Path group.)
2. Dan Crenshaw, a republican congressman from Texas, got into a shit-throwing contest with AOC on Twitter. It stemmed from Crenshaw’s tweet supporting a Houston woman who had fended off 5 delinquents by brandishing a concealed carry handgun. Crenshaw further mentioned that universal background checks would prevent him from loaning a firearm to any friends of his in sudden need who did not own their own gun.
AOC’s reaction was stunning. I will quote:
“You are a member of Congress. Why are you ‘lending’ guns to people unsupervised who can’t pass a basic background check? The people you’re giving a gun to have likely abused their spouse or have a violent criminal record, & you may not know it.”
Let that sink in.
In AOC’s world, republicans and/or texans are automatically unable to pass a criminal background check to legally purchase a firearm. Furthermore, they are almost certainly violent criminals and/or abusive spouses by nature.
To think in those terms takes a mind filled with bigotry, evil presumptions and hatred.
A defeat next November will see people in the MSM and the dhimmicrat party who are like this erupt in a frenzy of spittle-flecked fury. Their acolytes will become apoplectic as well.
I don’t think we’re going to get past this without significant violence in the public square. I just don’t see how.
Well put. If I could qualify a small point…it’s been pointed out that MS13 and some dirtier parts of the Democrat Party are so tight that’s there is no reason why the Dems shouldn’t call on them in an emergency. If antifa are the brownshirts, MS13 are (at least potentially) the blackshirts.
I’ll hate the sin and not the sinner as long as I can try and execute the sinner and not the sin.