We Look Away
Recently, I got to go to Las Vegas for a few days. I had great time walking the Strip. I really enjoyed some off-the-beaten path adventures with my wife, including a magic show in a speakeasy and some gourmet donuts from Saint Honoré Bakery. They even had fantastic pizza, so breakfast and lunch were covered there.
Las Vegas, I suppose the observant realize very quickly, is the capital of escapist frivolity. Perhaps because I don’t gamble much nor will you ever find me shopping at Dolce and Gabbana, well, I noticed some of the clear aspects to Vegas that exist beyond the spectacle. The homeless are everywhere. So is the stench of pot. Mental illness abounds in both those without shelter and those in the ritziest hotels. Vegas is America; it is the West. It’s just so intensely both.
After dinner one night, I took our leftovers to one of the homeless on the street. I saw others do this pretty routinely. That being said–and I’ll never forget this the rest of my life–when I gave him the food, I only glanced at his face and caught a brief glimpse of his eyes.
It is far easier to look away. A better man, a holier man would have at least stayed to look into his eyes and treat him like an image of God. I’m ashamed I didn’t look at him, and I mean really look at him.
As a historian then, I have been contemplating recently, with some serious scrutiny, the apparent decline of this civilization. In my studies, it is rather obvious that the disease is also the symptom when it comes to the downfalls of the past; namely, people look away, gloss over, excuse–and the most demonic and lost–even celebrate, the cruelest savagery.
Just how different is the modern West to the Aztecs of old, for example?
I don’t think the distinctions are numerous nor consequential. Indeed, what’s really different, except of course that the Aztecs were much more genuine in their savagery than we are? They didn’t hide it. They didn’t attempt to sanitize or justify it. Their human sacrifices were performed out in the open, often atop their temples. We use the media to bury the horrors. We use the vote and the barbarity of democracy to justify its persistence. We substitute all kinds of ridiculous terms for what is really murder, human sacrifice, and death on the secular altar of comfort and convenience. People in Montana just voted not to demand medical care be provided for infants born alive from botched abortions. How sick is that?! Is it any worse than the pictures that came from the heinous discovery–just this year–of five late term abortions performed in Washington D.C. (America’s Temple)? Anyone arrested for those acts (they were actually illegal)?! What’s the status of that investigation?!
How about the starvation war in Yemen, that the U.S. regime supports? Where is the light?!
No one cares? Well, I do. And anyone without unrelenting darkness in their heart and mind should care too.
“But, dear Lord, before you destroy it, what if there are only 10 (just) people left in the city, will you destroy it then?” (Genesis 18:32) That argument is becoming harder and harder to make.
His justice is coming.
Don’t look away.
