We have lost our collective Sanity

Featured image is a meme I made using two shirts available online through Ebay and Amazon. If you wish to buy either shirt, you can find them there.

We have gone insane as a society. We have lost our collective minds. Per CNN, Jewish people are being attacked in the US over the past week. Attacks have been on the rise as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict simmers down, having held for about a week now. Deseret News reported on the 21st, that the cease fire had been holding for four days.

In the US and across the globe, thousands have marched in support of both the Israeli Defense Forces and the Palestinian organization Hamas, the two main parties in this conflict. For those who haven’t been paying attention, Israel was moving to evict several families, about 70 in total, in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. This was taken as a provocation from many in the Muslim Quarter, and tense protests occurred, injuring many on both sides. Fatah and Hamas, the two major Palestinian political movements (a generous understatement), performed the usual saber rattling, saying they will extract a “heavy price” if Israel evicted those families.

Sure enough, conflict erupted. Hamas began firing rockets from their positions nested in civilian areas like apartment buildings into any and all areas of Israel, looking to fulfill their stated goal of destroying the state of Israel.

Yes, Israel has used the Iron Dome, and has launched military strikes in the Gaza area. Yes, there have been casualties, over 200 per NBC News, 66 children according to Al Jazeera. This conflict is war. I make no justification of it, and each death is a travesty that leaves ripples of consequence within the hearts of everyone associated with the victims.

But this military conflict is not on equal footing, and the rules aren’t equal. Hamas uses people to shield their activities while Israel calls people to warn them before bombing a building.

And yet we see people being attacked in the US for wearing a Kippah or a Yamaka, somehow the people doing the assaulting think that wearing a shirt justifies the assault. This is the same logic of the rapist, trying to justify their monstrous actions by blaming the victim. They shouldn’t have dressed that way.

We have eroded our morals to the point where this kind of activity is not only tolerated, but celebrated. We allow these things to happen because many in this country believe that we are the cause of evil in the world, and to some extent they are right, but not for the reasons we think.

Our virtues are vices, and our vices are virtues. We no longer tolerate in the name of tolerance. We call people racists because they wish not to judge on skin color and race. We tell people that they are hateful, when all they want to be is left alone. We demand action from people who wish to have peace. This is not rational, this is not based in any form of logic. We have come to view the world not through objective reality, but as a result of individual “truths.” Our world has devolved into nothing but an eternal power struggle, and it is one that I fear we are no longer able to escape from.