Why Do We Hurt Each Other Instead of Those Who Hurt Us?

I want to get this down in rough form before the whole internet is busy arguing about it. In Ferguson, in Los Angeles, in Chicago, how many of the people caught up in the unrest are harming their own neighbors? Businesses looted belong to fellow African Americans. Property being destroyed belongs to fellow African Americans. And the ordinary residents who broke no law find they can no longer go about their days in peace.

So the question I keep circling back to is simple. Why are we hurting each other rather than arresting and prosecuting the people who actually push lawlessness, whether in their own communities or someone else's? Why has it become so hard for African American families, and for the Caucasian and Hispanic families who live in these same torn-up neighborhoods, to run a normal business, travel safely, and live a quiet law-abiding life?

I have some memory to draw on here. I was a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison during the Vietnam war protests, back when the math research building was bombed. A graduate student who had been studying peacefully inside was killed in the blast. Murdered, really. It still surprises me that no one else died or was badly injured, because the damage ran for blocks. The thing I remember most clearly were the shattered windows in my own psychology building, blocks from the explosion, and in the University Hospital complex where people traveled from all over to get the best medical care available.

I kept trying, foolishly maybe, to carry on as if everything were normal. Going to class. Doing my research. Certain hours of the day it simply was not safe to be on campus, and my stomach stayed tied in knots. Some students and a few professors made no secret of the fact that they were glad to skip the ordinary work of teaching and learning so they could riot instead. For them it felt like a party. There were trash barrels burning in the intersections at night. There were young national guardsmen so frightened that their hands shook while they gave you orders.

I never held that against them. They had no way of knowing whether I was friend or enemy. To them I was one more student, one more possible rioter or bomb thrower. And I kept asking myself what I had done to deserve any of it. Nothing. I was a bystander who happened to be there. The same goes for the law-abiding people of Ferguson right now, the ones watching their businesses go up and their jobs and income disappear along with them. Why can't they go about their lives?

My husband was part of putting down the unrest in Joliet, Illinois, during that same period, because he served in the national guard. He will not talk about it, even now. If you want an example of post-traumatic stress on American soil, there it is.

What troubles me is a strong current of political correctness that seems to stop us from caring about one another or teaching anything that looks like morality. Why would a movement meant to protect people end up wounding innocent bystanders, while the unrest often stays comfortably away from the doorsteps of those who cheer it on?

Government exists to help people, not to harm them. That is the whole point of having it. There are small, local efforts out there, people paying it forward and helping each other with nothing asked in return. So where is our voice, in government and in our own neighborhoods? Why do we always seem to be the ones left holding the damage?

One more thing, and this may land me in hot water. What about the coming of the Antichrist? Why has no one in the media even raised it as a possibility during times like these? (I tried searching the web for related articles on the subject and came up with nothing.)

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