One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

by Omar El Akkad

In reality, when it’s convenient, liberals are well versed in every facet of fear, and the application of all it justifies. When it’s the most powerful nation on earth conducting a decades-long campaign of retaliative obliteration against multiple countries (one of which had precisely nothing to do with the inciting incident), leaving upward of a million civilians dead, revenge becomes a temporarily useful virtue. When it’s a herder on the other side of the planet burning an American flag after a drone operator in an Idaho strip mall mistook his children for terrorists, revenge becomes grotesque, the irredeemable realm of savages. Because imagine what this man might do. Imagine the dark violence of which he might be capable, in the grip of such rage. This man, this idea of a man. He might feed on his hatred and after feeding he might feed others, create a movement, take over a nation, even. And then, and then, and then—who’s to say?—conduct a decades-long campaign of retaliative obliteration against multiple countries. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine anything else?