The Subversive and Revolutionary Act of Not Setting Things on Fire

Photo by Beltane1, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Do not set things on fire or use the setting of things on fire for political, personal, or media gain.

Simple, right?

Apparently not.

Whataboutism is a hell of a drug. Unlike most other concepts, whataboutism is apparently flammable not only online but in real life. While waving the bloody shirt, or burning Tesla, or burning town, or ransacked Capital, or broken looted windows, or whatever else is going viral both for your cause and against the cause du jour is a tradition in America, we can opt out of it. Most just don’t because, well, the incentive for those who only experience acts of vandalism, violence, protest, and mayhem through a screen the entertainment value of politically fueled mayhem and dopamine hit of validating one’s priors are just too much to pass up.

If a politically ate up individual sets a Tesla on fire to get attention and make a political statement, no one should have to think about anything other than “that’s a crime and that’s a person who needs to be off the streets” before getting to who owns Tesla, why that person is in the news, or the motivations of the degenerate who got their Molotov on.

If that is you, and you can do that, God bless; please tweet and Facebook more of your takes, we need you. Start a podcast. Get a SubStack going. Submit to Ordinary Times. Your country needs you. Go forth and fear no evil.

Most folks probably do adulting like that with no problem. They do it naturally, without documentation on social media because they do not seek praise for doing what one is just supposed to do. The small group of way too online folks who drive the current media landscape, have that problem in pandemic proportions. But the former aren’t loud online, only showing up to get news media coverage during election years. The latter are very loud online, are the main audience of the news cycle, and constitute the headwaters for the information content flow that is our news media ecosystem.

Thus, we get burning Teslas on our screens and a national manhunt on social media so official pronouncements of terrorism can be made from Washington to get tens of millions riled up over the criminal actions of a few dozen.

But don’t anyone dare try to draw comparisons to the thousands who partook in the January 6th riots where a few dozen criminals did violence and hundreds more minor infractions that started a national manhunt on social media so official pronouncements of terrorism can be made from Washington to get tens of millions riled up over the criminal actions of little more than a thousand who were criminally charged before being pardoned.

And woe be to those who try to compare either to any example of a protests over anything that started as a good cause but was hijacked by folks who just wanted to destroy stuff, loot, and generally cause mayhem that started a national manhunt on social media so official pronouncements of terrorism can be made from Washington to get tens of millions riled up over the criminal actions of a few dozen.

See that? That’s called a template. It works every time it is tried because we don’t learn a damn thing, human nature is undefeated, and — in a new modern twist — a big chunk of the voting populace would rather be right on the internet with their in-groups than get it right in the real world as it exists in the Year of Our Lord 2025.

If ideas are peaceful but history is violent, then politics is finding a way to monetize the violence and perception thereof because peace doesn’t sell well enough to get out the vote. Angry folks click on both the social media messaging the backchannels craft, and on the donate buttons faster and without thinking, and nothing fires people up quite like the world on fire by the always dastardly “them” “they” and “those” of political sides. Then once heated up and melted down to the base alloys of priors, prejudices, and personal issues, the powerful untoward class can pour those voters right into the templates to be molded into anything they want. Then all that is needed is to run those molds through a hot bake of affirmation, cut them loose, and now a hardened product is ready and steeled for the next round of stuff on fire.

Preventing oneself from becoming a mindless weapon in the political wars starts with not being pliable enough for the template in the first place. That means not getting heated up enough to be melted down and plied. That means recognizing fires of criminal activity and political violence for what they are — criminality without excuse — and adjusting accordingly.

Smokey the Bear had it mostly right, only you can prevent forest fires; except for lightning strikes, PG&E equipment failures, Biblical windstorms, and so forth. Same goes for when political fires by idiot vandals are set for what they claim are political reasons but are always really selfish one; They did not prevent because they just wanted to set something on fire. Only we can prevent such folks from setting the rest of the political and social media world on fire with it. Just takes the integrity and consistency to denounce political violence every single time it happens regardless of where, why, who, or when.

Simple, right?

Apparently not.