“Shame, despair, solitude. These had been her teachers – stern and wild ones, – and they made her strong, but taught her much amiss.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne
There are any number of things missing from modern society. Just listen to conservative commentators long enough and you will hear a long list. There’s the broken homes, there’s the lack of God, and then you get into the really offensive stuff. All of these things are to blame for all of the problems we have today.
So, speaking of shame is certainly ironic. It is ironic because we spend a great deal of time talking about how all of these things are just red herrings and then we land on the shame. Yet, this is different. It is nearly impossible to articulate, but we will give it a try.
I know you thought he went away. I know you thought his 15 minutes of fame were up. I know you thought he would at least have the presence of mind to keep quiet until everyone had forgotten who this little son of a bitch was. I was right there with you. He apparently never learned anything from that experience.
As complaints go, this is a relatively minor one. After all, three people and their families never got justice for what happened to them. They were gunned down in the street and they were treated like the criminals. Hell, you had the judge in the case refuse to call them victims and then turn around and allow the defense to defame their character in open court.
That judge doesn’t feel shame. He should, but he doesn’t. Obviously, Rittenhouse has been robbed of this experience as well. It definitely impedes his moral development. At the very least, we had hoped that he would realize deep down inside what he had done. We are robbing people of that experience. We have robbed Rittenhouse of that experience.
Shame is the thing that keeps you from seeking the limelight after something like this. Shame is the thing that makes you realize you need to seek forgiveness or some sort penance even if your privaledge somehow exonerates you. Shame is the thing that aids in moral development. It’s the thing that tells you that you’ve done a horrible when you’ve killed three people and the courts made sure you didn’t spend a minute in jail for it.
Shame is the thing that tells you to go away. It is the thing that is missing all too often. It’s missing in this case because too many people have called this jackass a hero. It’s missing because that’s what he’s internalized and so he doesn’t understand why the mainstream media would say anything different. The best defense against defamation is the truth. The MSM has that in spades. Shame would have told him to leave well enough alone. Sadly, that shame wasn’t there.
halloffameindex 