Using Our Illusion

People have started writing articles on the internet that say Marla Ruzicka was a bad human being and deserved to die. Ms. Ruzicka, you may recall, was killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq at the beginning of last week. She was over there because she made it her business to knock on doors and make sure that Iraqis injured in the war got the money the U.S. government has set aside for them. The fact that she did this makes some people mad, so they write nasty things about her.

Now, in these troubling economic times, we at the Blasphemy Blog don’t begrudge anyone an honest living, or even a semi-honest living, but we do question why it is possible to make money dragging this particular do-gooder’s name through the dirt. Because you’ve got people saying that Ms. Ruzicka cared more about terrorists than innocent Americans, and that her death was “poetic justice.” Huh? What sensibilities was this woman offending by offering money the government has already set aside for foreigners to use? We’re talking about maimed children, often. Who gets angry about helping out maimed children? Whose feelings are being validated by this kind of execrable writing, that they're willing to support it?

People who feel guilty, is our only guess. It must be people who have convinced themselves that this war in Iraq is an absolute good, and therefore can’t possibly have resulted in the maiming of children. Plenty of people take a more realistic approach and say that, sure, some children will get hurt, but on the whole going to war for whatever reason we’re now saying we went to war is a positive thing. But that’s not good enough for some people, so, for them, Marla Ruzicka has to be wrong, and probably evil, too. If it were any other way, they would have to stop supporting the war, because the war would no longer be an absolute good and they are only on the side of absolute good. And that would mean that they’d have to hang out with peaceniks and communists, so they’ll just keep lying to themselves, thank you very much.

That’s the best guess, anyway: it’s all a side effect of self-delusion, an ugly but necessary lie that people who think America is godly must tell each other in order for their worldview to make logical sense. We suppose everyone is entitled to their psychoses; if only the rest of us didn’t have to participate.