Have 158 years brought us full circle?

While reading John Jake's novel, On Secret Service, a brilliant piece of historical fiction, it suddenly occurred to me how people today act not unlike America's citizens during the Civil War, many of which presented as spectators at some of this country's most horrific battles. They gathered their friends, families and picnic baskets, many of which were prepared by slaves, and sauntered off to the fairgrounds as they were called in the day to watch in grand spectacle our own people slaughter each, as was also the fashion during the Gladiator thousands of years prior. Today we may not put ourselves on the frontline of actual blood spatter but we are there as we watch people eviscerate each other over real or imagined offenses ranging from the benign to horrendous without much change in attitude between them. We sit in the box seats our virtual arenas gleefully desiring and anticipating revenge to be exacted on the next poor patsy dragged onto the stage. These days it doesn't matter who they are or what they said or did, it only seems to matter that someone is next in line to be the next target of a takedown, no matter the cost to them, their careers, their families, even if there has been no offense other than to have ended up on the bad side of the person/s wielding the power. But what is the cost to us? What does it say about a citizenry of people who were raised on the premise of Innocent Until Proven Guilty, but who war now perfectly fine with trashing one of the basic foundations of our freedom in exchange for the destruction of fellow humans in the name of entertainment. Because when you put it in that perspective it is my hope that we can see the faults within this system of civility, or lack thereof. But the bigger question is as we stand on the sideline smirking at the latest victims of this obscene spectacle, one can only wonder, who's next? Yes, who is next? Because who amongst us can be upheld to such a level of scrutiny that puts people on trial for mistakes they made 20, 30, 40 years ago, murder aside, and judges us on a behavior that was totally acceptable in those days but isn't now? I might know, MIGHT KNOW, a handful who walked through life without erring another human being along his/her path in life but even that's doubtful simply because imperfection is the human condition which means we all make mistakes. It's just that simple.

So then why are we so eager to laugh and party while we throw rotten apples at today's batch of poor sonsofbitches being marched up to the public stocks? Why does it make us feel better to belittle and scorn those who haven't even had their day in court? And do you ever wonder how you would ever deal with it if your deepest secrets were exposed? Or even if we did nothing wrong but someone launched accusations at us, and now we've lost our job and worse, our family was humiliated because of a lie someone told about us? Why aren't we taking a step back from this mob mentality and thinking about the long term implications of such behavior because there will be backlash and it's only a matter of time. It's been 158 years since the north and the south gathered up their friends and picnic baskets to watch the battle of Bull Run unleash its great ugliness which eventually claimed almost 5,000 casualties. Yet only after the senseless maiming and slaughter of so many lives was over and the picnic baskets and the last champagne bottles emptied did anyone observe how much more barbarous and devastating it was than they had envisioned it would be. What's it going to take to open our eyes to the careless vicious destruction of human lives in this reality tv spectacle in which we reside? #realitytv #realitytheatre #realitytheater #badbehavior #whoarewe