Insanity = Free Pass With No Consequences

Insanity.

The term has become a scourge on society.

If we don't like facing up to the consequences of our actions, we can always claim 'temporary insanity' or, in a worst case scenario where our own death or a lifetime imprisonment might be the penalty for our choices, we claim to be 'totally insane' and therefore not to be held accountable for our actions.

Everyone on the planet gets consequences.

Some are delayed, some are immediate.

The problem is that we have an entire segment of the population that believes consequences are just not for them. Sure, OTHER people can have consequences, but they are somehow different, special, set apart from the teeming masses of humanity and therefore exempt from experiencing the consequences they have chosen to follow the actions they equally chose.

Do people do stupid, hurtful and potentially life-altering things when under stress? Yes.

But that shouldn't offer them a free pass from natural consequence by just shouting out "I was insane at the time!"

People are a strange lot.

We expect other people to have consequences of the most severe nature when our pride is hurt, our feelings wounded, our family injured or other dire happening occur.

Yet, when we are the ones who make the mistakes that start a chain reaction, we want to be absolved. Not forgiven - absolved. As if NOTHING had ever happened.

We want there to be a heaping, hefty helping of mercy to be dished up for us. We no longer believe in justice because it would make us see just what kind of person we have become and thus force payment in kind for our thoughtless, selfish, irresponsible or just plain evil acts toward our self and others.

Justice is a concept we believe in when it applies to those "OTHER PEOPLE" who are not like us. They aren't special. They don't have the extraordinary circumstances under which we labor. They aren't like us and therefore deserve to be punished with the full measure of justice meted out minus the tenderizing factor of mercy. They don't deserve mercy.

But we do.

We have come to believe that mercy is the most important thing of all. That if we are just tree-hugging, world loving, all encompassing merciful to everyone that we can all gather into a big circle and join hands for an emotionally evocative round of Kum Bah Ya.

Bull poop.

There are those in this world who use the mercy of others extended to them in good faith as a stepping stone to far more evil deeds. They believe that they are the Darwinian exemplar of 'the strongest and fittest' who should survive by climbing toward the top of the food chain on the backs of those they deem to be 'the weakest link' in the evolutionary chain.

The prey on those who are kind. They violate sacred trusts to obtain personal gain, whether monetary or physical gains of all stripes. They use and abuse without let and then cry like babies when they are caught up in the consequences of the mess they have, themselves, created.

Then the crying really begins.

"I am not responsible for my actions."

"I am insane."

"No one understands me!"

"I'm not really a bad person!"

Interesting how the progression goes along. It is the ages old cycle of sin that has been the downfall of mankind forever.

"HE/SHE/IT made me do it!"

Blaming anything and everyone for our choices is as old as Satan himself. He doesn't want accountability any more than those he is tempting to choose evil do. Cain and Abel didn't start out as babies with murder as the end in mind. But it sure got that way.

Cain tried to pawn off an excuse of not being his brother's keeper. It's just another way of crying out that he wasn't responsible for his willful and defiant choice.

No different are ANY of us sinners in our desire to escape the consequences of our sinful choices, but our courtrooms are jammed with people who will never understand that straight line between choices and consequences.

They aren't insane in large measure. What they are is cold, calculating, cunning and diabolical. They want to have power. It's not about what's fair.

It's about getting away with murder, literally and figuratively.

Just pondering while reading headlines today...