That word is being thrown around a lot, today. How can we possibly comprehend the acts of an individual who thinks that his judgment, his actions, his glossy crazy, are to replace the results of an election?
Kinda' lets us all off easy, doesn't it?
It certainly doesn't require that the media examine its part in fanning the flames of irrationality. It lets anyone with a strident voice, and a keyboard, off the hook. It eliminates any need for a further examination of the political and social climate that makes hate, and violence, and using any lie to make a point, unnecessary.
After all, if it is incomprehensible, then we just can't comprehend the dynamics, and we might as well not bother our pretty little heads trying.
We have frequently bemoaned the loss of civility in our discourse. We shudder at the rantings of Beck and Limbaugh, and assume that smart people will see right through the lies. We shrug when a neighbor makes inaccurate statements, mangles facts, or condones violence. We are horrified at the ravings of a Palin, or rank and file Tea Party adherent. Then we pat ourselves on the back, take a deep breath, piously mourn, and move on. We, after all, are not the problem.
There have been many examples in our history of mad men, operating in the belief that that only they understand the truth, killing our heroes and leaders. And, we always assume that their actions, so far from the social contract in a democracy, can be safely tucked away as "incomprehensible".
But are they?
There is so much information in the world that even the most dedicated among us can not monitor it all. We can't process each and every event. We can't test and verify each and every fact. We can't know reality, and its complex and interrelated effects. So we select. We watch Keith and Rachel and Lawrence. We read The Nation and DKos. We prepare for threatening snow storms and try to pay the bills.
And all the while the Ellsworth Toohey's are operating behind the scenes to cultivate that irrational streak in humans that allows them to divorce themselves from the broader implications of their thoughts and actions.
We protect religions that preach hate.
We breed to extinction, while electing climate change denier to our governing bodies.
We think our own individual values should supplant the values that others espouse.
We constantly confuse belief with truth, perception with fact, and knowledge with information.
We are each fed a daily diet of "soap". That clever, manipulative, stream of carefully crafted words intended to sell us some other useless product to enrich some other person who is as much a victim of the system as we. (My current favorite is a small, hand held device that you use to find your lost cell phone. If you lose your cell how do you keep track of the devise? A classic "Rememberile for Longbottom.")
And if we are reasonably well educated, and average smart, we all know that we know very little. Fragmented bits of propaganda, advertising, and political cant dominate our lives. Making sense of the world has, indeed, become incomprehensible...
But that is not good enough! We must find a way to understand. We must find a way to penalize the soap salesman, the hate mongers, and the liars, and make it stick.
We must use the public space to belittle, humiliate, and ridicule them. Strip them of their ability to confuse and prey on the disturbed among us who replace democracy with individual acts of violence.
That is, of course, the great tension in any democratic system. It is a tension that Ivory Coast, and Haiti, and Palestine have yet to resolve. It is a tension that is stripping America of her greatness. The rule of law is being supplanted by the rule of cult.
Time to stop looking on in horror, wringing our hands and crying, "It's incomprehensible."
Our future is at stake.