APPEASEMENT: THE POISON PILL

Image Credit: Getty Images

We live in a country which appeases the violent rage and resentments of those who fail to thrive in this free and wealthy nation. This appeasement has poisoned our cities and corroded our national values. The act of appeasing tantrums is not compassion. It is a knee-jerk response of a bad friend, a disengaged family member or an inadequate parent.

We have seen recycled rage recently in America. It was sparked by the personal violence between two dysfunctional human beings who knew each other. Not a random act of police brutality. It was a personal murder, horrific and voyeuristically exploited for its horror by media and certain political  interest groups. It set fire to mass misery of nanny-state confinement imposed by a misdirected Federal governmental response to a virus. Marxists and anarchists seized the opportunity to stir up America's ready confusion, guilt and resentment over a history which is shameful and long dead. 

Politicians in public office fell back to appeasement as the time-honored treatment for the violence and discontent which erupted. Like ancient physicians, they bled Americans for more sympathy, more money, more forgiveness, more scapegoating of police. Those who exploited the mobs were rewarded once again. However, those who have failed to thrive in America due to internal or external influences were not helped. Appeasement of the predatory organizers always leaves the mob with less than before.

America has chosen appeasement over scientific treatment of the mentally ill. Vast homeless populations of addicted and deranged human beings squat in some American cities. The homeless...a cruel label in itself because it obscures the root causes of their plight...are those whom America has abandoned as hopeless. Appeasement of so-called mental-health advocates in earlier decades was a convenient reaction to their generally unwarranted claims against state mental institutions.  

Appeasement of the public's disdain, manipulated by Hollywood was cost-effective for bean counters in state houses across America. The neglected infrastructure of these 19th and early 20th century refuges for the mentally and behaviorally dysfunctional would have been costly to bring up to modern scientific standards of medical treatment. President Reagan's pushing the country to profitable corporatism over social responsibility brought Federal support for extinguishing accessible residential mental health treatment in America. It is almost gone today.

Appeasement was the poison pill offered by President Johnson's administration in response to the 1960's civil rights movements. Policies which destroyed the incentive for stable nuclear families in the Black community were presented as solutions for Black poverty. 

Rather than generously supporting and uplifting Black men with education funds, local business opportunities and job creation through skills development, the welfare system undercut the value of Black male social advancement by financing the multiple births of unwed mothers. And the availability of disadvantaged Black men conveniently swelled the ranks of those sent off to die in the jungles of Vietnam.

Appeasement has been used to treat the obesity epidemic in America. The escalation of food subsidies has paralleled the escalation of that epidemic. The citizens of one of the fattest countries in human history are constantly bombarded with pleas for food pantry donations. Where are these emaciated poor people? I have yet to find them. Yet, I frequently stand in a cashier line behind an obese person paying for a bad diet with a government food-stamp cash card. 

Social media and entertainment media have launched vicious campaigns to appease their obese consumers. A crusade against fat-shaming healthy human beings was appeasement of the unhealthy at the expense of the healthy. Similar appeasement campaigns are being waged on behalf of practitioners of unhealthy addictions to alcohol and other drugs. 

Appeasement of those with gender dysphoria entails advocating for their surgical mutilations at public expense. Appeasement by the homosexual population by financing the promotion of one controversial approach to a psychological disorder by its advocacy organizations has fractionalized the gay rights movement. Gay men, the most viciously persecuted homosexual group globally, have been alienated by the LGBTQI movement in favor of highlighting transgender issues. 

Appeasement in the face of harsh injustice or violence is simply cowardice. No matter what the threatening mob demands, it is still a mob, not a "peaceful demonstration" or "an army of social justice warriors". It is an angry mob. Angry mobs tear down cultural heritage, like statues. Angry mobs loot and attack innocent bystanders. Angry mobs deface private and public property. Angry mobs demand that people think and speak as the mob dictates, or else be silenced. 

Our leaders in American governments and American corporations are failing the rational, the peaceful, the just, the responsible. They are failing those who are unable to thrive in America due to external or internal impediments as well. The concern of our elected officials and CEOs is their own security and well being over that of hard-working citizens and taxpayers. This has never been more obvious. Why do we as consumers, voters and taxpayers continue to appease them by giving them our money and votes?