Chillingly, liberally illiberal

“In a Super Bowl Sunday interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Trump shrugged off O’Reilly’s comment that Putin is a “killer”: “There are a lot of killers,” Trump said. “We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?” Now, how should those truly liberal of mind take such a comment from the president of the United States? I think that he speak truth here. What is actually problematic is what he is using this truth to support and not that he is stating something other than fact that can easily be validated, has been validated many times over by truly reliable sources. All hinges on how one chooses to see the meaning of the term “killer.” There is no denying that the United States does kill good number of people and it does so under both democratic and republic administrations. Some killing does not make a killer for some because it is killing for the right reasons–those who kill for such purposes are not killers! In fact, they are often said to be heroes. The thinking that gets one from killing to hero with no pause to consider “killer” is a psychology that deserves examination for it might help to reveal what happens when the politics of a democratic society is reduced to “parties” and the “membership” of its people in one or another party a good thing rather than what it really is, a democracy destroying phenomenon. A good member of a party, it seems, has to go along with what his or her party does and this places a good amount of pressure on the individual to find ways to justify what his or her party does, even if what the party does is reprehensible, would be condemned out of hand had what is done been sponsored by the other party. The fact that people are willing to elevate killer to hero without thinking of the true effect of the deed for individual killed and all of humanity is truly chilling.