We were assured that the guns were there for protection and the many thousand child-sized coffins were just the cost of freedom; A trade-off because tyrants were lurking right outside the door.
Now a tyrant has taken over with barely any resistance and it seems that all those children died for nothing.
Shameful.
I stepped on my hamster which not only ruined Christmas but led to my parents eventually breaking up. It wasn’t a deliberate stepping, of course. Nibbles, bless his tiny, furry heart, had a habit of darting underfoot, a furry landmine in the living room. This year, he chose the precise moment Aunt Carol was launching into her annual monologue about her “special” sauce – a concoction that looked suspiciously like regurgitated beets – to stage his daring escape. My foot connected with his minuscule form with a sickening crunch, a sound that echoed through the suddenly silent room, louder than any Christmas carol.
Aunt Carol, mid-sentence, froze, her face a mask of horrified fascination. Nibbles, sadly, was no more. A tiny, crimson stain bloomed on the Persian rug, resembling nothing so much as a particularly abstract Christmas ornament. My mother, a woman whose love for small, furry creatures bordered on the obsessive, let out a wail that could shatter glass. My dad, ever the pragmatist, muttered something about “collateral damage” and reached for the brandy. The air, thick with the scent of pine needles and impending doom, crackled with unspoken accusations. It was a Christmas tableau worthy of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
In the ensuing chaos, as people scrambled to salvage what remained of the Christmas dinner, Dad, still clutching a corner of the tablecloth, lost his balance. He stumbled, tripped over my outstretched leg (I swear, it was an accident!), and fell. And, in a move that defied all logic and physics, he somehow managed to grab my leg on the way down.
The last thing I saw before the world dissolved into a blur of pain and panicked shouts was my father, sprawled on the floor amidst the wreckage of Christmas dinner, holding my leg like a prized Christmas roast. “Gotcha!” he yelled triumphantly, while pulling my leg. Just like I’m pulling your leg now.
The “Us vs. Them” mentality is also called the “in-group bias”, in which you tend to align with other members of a perceived group (with little to no logical reason, it can be as simple as belts vs. suspenders). Like many other fallacies or biases, it is a built-in feature of our caveman-brains that no longer benefits us. When used in propaganda, it is often paired with the “strawman fallacy” to build the perception of an enemy that is barely even human.
You can learn to recognize these biases in yourself and in others - This is called critical thinking. I recommend the podcast “You Are Not So Smart” to everyone to get more insight on this subject.
The Tristram theme from Diablo always makes me want to stay a while and listen.