The behavior of walking into a garage doesn't make one a car. Going to church doesn't make someone a Christian. Our culture is moving away from INTENT to CONSEQUENCE, and individual freedoms are threatened as a result.

An accident is an accident, not a crime. This dangerous erosion of liberty is so fundamental that I'm wondering how people got tricked in believing this nonsense (beliefs are silly, only behavior matters). Ideas, views, or opinions lead to behavior. Behavior without intent is meaningless.

Like it or not, a mistaken 'belief in consent' means that a person lacked intent. At least with crimes, 'criminal intent' is the legal protection ensuring you won’t be sent to prison for accidental crimes. The act is not culpable unless the mind (intent) is guilty. If you don't KNOW (guilty mind) that you are speeding, it is harder to get a conviction. Do you believe you were speeding? Do you know why you were pulled over?

Belief and knowledge are close cousins at worst. But on a more basic but essential level, when someone does something without intent, it's hard to reward their 'behavior.'

When someone's heart is full of love, and it's so palpable, how could a person not know it? Sensitive people FEEL the energy of good-hearted people or mean people, for that matter.

Have people shut their hearts off completely through cynicism, skepticism, or some other negative state of consciousness arising from abuse or injury? Who knows.

Political Landscapes and the Psychology of American Debate

Wouldn't it be interesting to be a little birdie overhearing private meetings where 'the powers that be in the media' decide which candidates will be heard in televised debates?  There is probably an unspoken agreement that only Democrats and Republicans will be considered on the national front, and even then, which ones will be heard?  If there are about twenty-five Democratic contenders who threw their hats into the ring, why were less than half of them heard in recent so-called debates?  No wonder so few people vote.  Not voting is voting, but no one hears the real reason as to why this is true. 

There's been a political power disconnect from the people for a long time; voter alienation is a direct consequence of hearing only the voices deemed controllable.  The national fuse-box is overloaded and will eventually flip the fuse breaker, but that's OK.  The electric meter will be turned back on, and taxpayers will pick up the bill whether they like it or not.  No one is sending out questionnaires to 'the people' as to where they want tax dollars to go.  That duck don't quack.   Mock Duck "taxpayer-representation" has been a point of cynicism among the none-voting public for a long time.  Seems like there was a little revolution that happened over this once upon a time.

Voting for the lesser of two evils is an abdication of personal responsibility.  One of the problems with democrassy (I spelled it right) is that it grows mediocrity.  The average opinion has merit only in terms of the freedom of individual voices.  What good are personal freedoms when they don't have a platform?  We might have a free press, but we are not free of the press. 

Mass Media corporations run for enterprise and profit first and foremost. Freedom is like an adjunct professor requiring 'suits with cameras' outside of their classroom to scare people away from the classroom (and protect he or she from extremist predators) all for financial gain. 

Maybe freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.  Sing it, Janice.

175 Overdoses & 17 Fatalities

17 human beings who screwed up, yes. But also 17 humans who touched someone's hearts in their lives and who now have left broken hearts in the wake of their choices and addiction (selling their freedom, even their lives, for a high). These 17 people made a difference in their friends and loved-ones lives. 

The 17 are more than their addiction and remembering the good they accomplished should not be lost in the indifference of society who sometimes think they are better than them. 

The 17 were not 'unnecessary verbs' or Darwinian casualties (survival of the fittest and natural selection weeding out the weak). 

Many accomplished people die from addiction, too, including great artists, philosophers, judges, teachers, children of parents who loved them (they are as crucial to our world as great religious teachers who fell from social grace). 

"Indifference is the least we have to dread from man or beast. If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me." W.H. Auden from his poem, The More Loving One