While I am not a believer in the Rapture, I have to admit that on some days, the idea has its appeal. The world certainly does seem to be hurtling toward doom, and even the most hardened skeptic is apt to wonder from time to time if the end is indeed nigh. Allow me to string together three seemingly unrelated items to make my point.
Pay attention to the first five and a half minutes of the MRCTV video here. Then watch the rest of the video, which is equally depressing but not as disturbing.
Next, consider the case of 20-year-old Samuel J. Webster of Woods Cross, Utah. Webster is facing 23 counts of animal cruelty. Webster, it seems, enjoys torturing animals and posted videos of himself torturing guinea pigs on YouTube. Conservative content rarely escapes the eye and ban hammer of the megalithic Google/Alphabet, but videos that showcase the torture of small animals are okay, I guess. According to KUTV, Webster purchased four guinea pigs in 2021 and posted 23 videos in which he tortured the animals. Online sleuths managed to track Webster down. He was arrested and charged with “18 counts of felony animal crush video distribution on YouTube, one count of felony animal crush video creation, and four counts of animal crushing.”
Finally, on Friday I told you about the riot in Union Park Square in New York City. Thousands of young people showed up because a gamer named Kai Cenat was giving away PlayStation 5s and gaming gear. The usual chaos and destruction ensued. On Monday, The New York Post reported that Mayor Eric Adams wanted to know where the parents were, claiming, “This is not a policing issue, [it] is a parenting issue.”
But a parent of two of the rioters, Stacy Lucas, disagreed and commented, “You cannot blame parents. This is the blame of society, of people who use their guns to harm rather than protect.” The Post noted that no officers drew their firearms during the riot. Her son, Angel John, lost his sneakers during the riot and was miffed that the cops would not let him back in to retrieve them. He lamented, “I had to kick them and do extra stuff so that I can try to get my sneakers.” Claiming that he is lactose intolerant, the young man was also angry that he was served a PBJ with milk while in custody. Mom’s response? “Kids are going to be kids.”
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Three subjects, none of which seem to have anything to do with the other. The unifying element is that in each case, we are dealing with people who have somehow lost all sense of propriety and, I dare say, humanity. Granted, that is not a surprise. People have been acting like animals since Caine clocked Abel. The Third Reich, Communist China, Stalin’s Soviet Union, the Khmer Rouge — the list of people ceding their humanity for power or immediate gratification is long and crosses all of the boundaries of history, nation, and race.
And yet, here it is, 2023. People are still acting like animals. And somehow, despite all of our technology, or more appropriately because of it, we have managed to regress. Trumpet your gender, enforce your pronouns, shout your abortion, scroll your feeds. The consequences be dammed. Our technology, our media, our institutions of higher learning, and in particular, our government have served to somehow vault us backward on the evolutionary scale. We wanted the world promised by “Star Trek.” We are getting “Lord of the Flies.”
