You Are Not Normal

Posted by Wicasta on 03 Feb 2024.

I troll Quora sometimes. Quite often there are interesting discussions there. A lot of times people ask technical questions that I can, and do, answer. And then, of course, there are the professional trolls who seem to hang out on Quora just to ask provacative questions. Or, more likely, these “people” are bots pushing some organization's or foreign government's agenda. Putin loves the idea of being able to manipulate Americans be tossing dissonance into our collective conversation, and millions of us don't have the cognitive capacity to resist.

The following question was posted on Quora. It was clearly trolling. But I felt like I needed to respond to it, simply because I felt like it needed to be responded to. I have friends, relatives, and acquaintances who think like this, whether or not they would actually say it so bluntly. Anyway, the “question” was;

Democrats who voted for Biden, are you proud of yourself? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror or considered psychology? You are not normal.

The following was my response;

I’m not a Democrat, but I tend to vote Democrat (mostly because Republicans are insane). I have looked at myself in the mirror, and I have been struck by the realization that I’m not normal. As near as I can tell, “normal” is ignorance. “Normal” is hatred. “Normal” is selfishness, belligerence, violence. “Normal” is what human beings would be without the rule of law, which essentially would dictate that without guaranteed repercussions, a “normal” human being would steal money from your pockets as you lay on the ground dying after a car accident. A “normal” human being would rape your corpse. A “normal” human being believes that only the strong do, or should, survive, and that if you can take it, whatever it is, then that’s just the way of the jungle.

So yeah, I’m not “normal”. That kind of normal is represented by every Republican I’ve ever met. These are the people who would rather children starve than give their parents a helping hand. These are the people who would rather see others die by drowning than let them across the border. These are the people who would force 10-year-old rape victims to give birth to their rapist’s baby and arrest her for murder if she tried to remove that demon’s seed. And these are the people who obsessively point their fingers at everyone else, bashing others with the Word of God, even though there’s nothing in their lives or actions that would suggest they’ve ever heard the word of their god, or even darkened the doors of a church. These are the people who can look at a man like Donald Trump, who is the living antithesis of literally everything Jesus Christ ever taught, and declare him a godly man.

“Normal”, as you see it, as encapsulated in the Republican party, is the antithesis of everything good in the world. Love. Compassion. Tolerance. Understanding. Empathy. All of these qualities are alien concepts to the basic model of human that makes up the Republican party; those “normal” people who know nothing in their hearts but hatred for anything and anyone that is not exactly like them.

Yes, I HAVE looked in the mirror and “considered psychology”. I’ve wondered why I’m not “normal” like all the other, baser animals of my species. I don’t know the answer to that. Maybe I was just raised right. Whatever the reason I am essentially a deviation to the basic pattern, whatever reason I’m not “normal”, I am grateful for it. It is a much better existence, being in the light. Human beings have the capacity to rise above their baser natures and truly be all those things Jesus of Nazareth taught us to be (a man whose teachings one can follow without being a Christian, by the way). We, human beings, were given a choice, to become MORE than we are, to be more than the animals and savages our baser natures compel us to be. But “normal” people aren’t willing to put in the work. “Normal” people won’t take on that challenge. “Normal” people don’t think much beyond themselves and their immediate friends and family, and couldn’t give a damn about anyone whose skin, religion, ethnicity, or politics make them “different”. “Normal” people think they can live a life filled with indifference and depravity, but somehow make it right in the eyes of God by eating a fried chicken sandwich and expressing their hatred of “the gays”.

I don’t know why I’m not “normal”. But I thank the gods every day that I am not. I’ve seen what y’all think are normal. And I don’t want to be a part of that biomass.

   
References

• • Original Response @ Quora

   
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