"Light 'em up."
Those words made the news this week as footage surfaced of National Guardsmen marching through the streets of Minneapolis and shooting residents with paintball guns. Someone could have told the people on the porch that residents needed to go back inside because of civil unrest.
It could have been a simple matter of saying, "Sir/Ma'am, we need you to stay inside right now for your own safety until things are under control." Instead, someone decided to have phalanxes of people march through the streets behind military vehicles, enforcing what amounted to martial law.
It could be argued that Tim Walz saw the chaos in Minneapolis as a way to consolidate power. Doubtless, he saw an opportunity to co-opt the anger that the rampaging mobs expressed as a way to strengthen his position and himself. He might have felt smug sending guardsmen into the streets to stomp through suburban neighborhoods. And it appears that these men were so carried away that they felt compelled to turn a paintball gun on some hapless people standing on their porch.
Power has a way of bringing out the worst in us.
Hitler has been called many things. He may have been an evil madman, but he was not stupid. One of the practices of the Third Reich was to create societies, groups, units, and other things for people to join. Hitler was shrewd enough to then provide these people with uniforms, badges, buttons, ribbons, and medals.
These associations and decorations gave the German people a sense of belonging and a way to outwardly display their power. It showed that they had some muscles to flex. Those may not have been very strong muscles in some cases, but they were there. SS uniforms were designed to give the wearer a sense of power and to intimidate victims.
Power is at the heart of most acts of evil. We may robe causes with words like "equity" and "justice," but a desire for power and affirmation is at the heart of Antifa, BLM, and, for that matter, the Democratic Party. The scary aspect of this desire is that it is in all of us. Words are powerful, whether we want to admit it or not. If that were not the case, Big Tech and the people for whom it works would not be so intent on silencing dissenting voices.
Nowhere is this more on display than on social media. Despite its potential benefits, it is often used for the most horrific purposes. A video of a dental hygienist in Knoxville, Tenn., surfaced this week. Kelsey Pollard is one of several employees fired from Premier Dental Group. The video showed Pollard and her coworkers reading a patient's personal journal chronicling her struggles with cancer. Not only are they reading the journal on camera, but they are also mocking the patient.
First, this is a monstrous HIPAA violation. This is a violation that can result in fines and possibly jail time. Second, how did these people get hold of a patient's personal property? Third, what could possess someone that they would do something so odious? What mental and emotional fail-safes had to collapse for Pollard and her co-workers to decide that this was a fun activity?
What's more, according to the New York Post, Pollard was anything but penitent. She followed up this sorry performance by posting a TikTok video in which she grins and flashes a peace sign. The video is captioned “When you go viral for being a piece of ****.” She then pretends to climb into a dumpster. Pollard is not the one reading the diary, but she joins in the "fun." At no point does she or the male co-worker step in and put a stop to it.
Why would anyone do something like this? Because it takes very little to bring out the worst in people. Pollard and her coworkers felt the rush of power. They had the power to invade someone's private life, so they did. They had the power to mock someone, so they did. They had the power to invite the world to join them in their cruelty, so they did. And they had the power to inflict pain for the sake of doing so. So they did.
There is ample evidence of abuses of power by members of government at all levels, and it is a safe bet that there will be more to come. But the story of Pollard and her coworkers reminds us that the potential to engage in evil for power and attention does not only lurk in the Oval Office or the halls of Congress or even at city hall. It lurks in all of us.
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