I must say my thoughts on yesterday's DC mayhem seem quite different from what i am generally seeing and reading. Maybe it is because I do not watch TV and thus do not have a lot of ugly images in my mind. Or maybe it is because I have for some time seen our government in Washington as something other than what it should be, or is claiming to be.
Yes, rioting and destruction are wrong. Period. But are they more wrong, or even equally wrong, as what has been transpiring in our nation? Or are they in at least one sense if not justifiable, at least understandable. Even predictable?
An illustration far from those ugly images of rioting may help explain...
Say there is a man who has toiled for years and years for his very large and ever growing family. Day after day he has awakened, gone to work, done his duty to his wife and many children.
Things had not felt "right" for some time in his home. He knew his wife had often been away from the home when she had told him she had been there. Sometimes there were signs of what appeared to be hastily removed makeup on her face when he returned a bit early from work, and in other cases she'd be absent from the house altogether upon his unexpected return. And in those cases her explanations often just didn't ring quite true.
Then there were the gifts she had received. From whom wasn't exactly clear. Mostly just baubles, but a few rather expensive appearing pieces of jewelry -- which she had tried to keep hidden.
Then, worst of all, was his doubt about the children. Several just didn't look like they were his. Their coloring and features were just so "other," and few actually -- okay, lets just say it -- looked rather like some men whom he had thought were his friends. -One even looked like a man who he viewed more as an 'enemy.'
After years of this -- of growing doubts and insecurities, as the 'stories' his wife gave him became less and less believable -- he decided to do some checking into it all.And so he hired a detective to find out the facts and provide evidence of any unfaithfulness, should such be occurring. And the reports from that hired detective were to him nothing less than devastating.
The worst of his fears were proved true. His wife had been regularly cheating on him. The children he had been supporting -- those that looked nothing at all like him -- were in fact apparently not his own.
And so he 'lost it.' Screaming and shouting about a divorce. Insisting that his "wife" had to get out and get out quick.
The children he did not directly approach with this. They, he knew, were themselves not to blame. But they heard the row and their own names had loudly come up there. It was devastating to them. Unfairly so.
That display of anger was wrong.
But was such not at least understandable?
And who really was mostly to blame? Was it the detective? The man who had been hired for the very purpose of revealing the truth? Should he have remained silent?
And all the above -- call it "The Story of the Whoring Wife" if you will -- to me parallels what America has experienced.
I will not riot. No, nor will I try to justify the same. But I do understand.
Seen this way don't you?
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