Every once in a while, I will catch myself wishing a punishment on someone who has somehow acted irresponsibly. A little moment of revenge mindedness. But I feel like I'm usually quick in recognizing it and putting a stop to it.
Really, if I'm wishing ill on someone, I'm practicing a vague sort of superstition about justice inherent in what must then be a system with some level of planning. So it doesn't make much sense for me to wish ill on other people. That doesn't mean I have to love my enemy. In fact, that probably is a bad idea on most occasions. Loving my enemy could possibly lead to... well, getting beaten by my enemy.
The GOP is officially the "Blame the Victim and Spare No Punishment" Party. Describe to them the plight of a single teenage mother, and the answer is inevitably going to be something like, "Well, she should think before she acts," or "Don't have sex if you can't handle the problems!"
The gyst of a comment like that really boils down to "She gets what she deserves." And really, they seem to think that the negative impact of her situation on the rest of the community around her is irrelevant. The bulk of the Republican party now holds fringe beliefs. This fringe conservative party is now the party of punishment. All actions deserve punishment.
If you were to present a story of rape told by a woman, the bulk of Republican voters would be most inclined to doubt the story of the woman. They seem to automatically assume that the woman is guilty of some crime of inaction or perhaps she even could be considered to have actively solicited the treatment.
That's another way of saying that she deserved what she got. She was punished for her actions.
It's the way they differentiate between supporting the death penalty and opposing abortion. The reason they can be 'pro-life,' but still support the death penalty is that the prisoner did something bad, and therefore the prisoner deserves the punishment of death.
One of the places this shows up incredibly well is when it comes to discussions of poverty. There is no poor person who doesn't deserve to be poor, and there is no rich person who doesn't deserve to be rich. Simply by virtue of being wealthy, they are worthy of high praise and adulation. Simply by the sheer chance that you were born to a teenage mother in a hopeless situation, you deserve whatever your life holds for you.
They are the Party of Punishment. The bulk of them would love to see the firehoses and rubber bullets, the tear gas and bean bag guns, and the riot shields and the batons be brought to bear on the Occupy Wall Street protests.
In their mind, the protesters would deserve it for any of a variety of moral missteps. Apparently, there are some strange things that deserve punishment. Bongo Drum Playing, Not Showering, Having an unfocused message, Having long hair, Burning incense, Being unemployed...
These are some odd reasons to deserve punishment, I agree.
This new fringe party is, in my humble opinion, writhing in agony as it goes through its death throes. They are somehow strangely occurring in the mainstream of political thought.
The other thing they seem to adore is suffering. I don't quite get it, but they seem infatuated with the notion that people should suffer if they do something unwise. The more suffering the better. We saw it in their debates. It's sick. What sort of twisted individual wishes suffering upon someone who is in a bad situation due only in small part to their own choices?
For them, suffering silently is a virtue. Please, if you are suffering, I'd like to know. Good people want to know if you're suffering. Bad people want you to keep your suffering to yourself.
We're good people.