Something I've been thinking about: In the days leading up the election I saw a few of Clinton's attack ads against...

Originally shared by Jesse Burneko

Something I've been thinking about: In the days leading up the election I saw a few of Clinton's attack ads against Trump. And the thing that struck me and maybe should have been a warning sign is that it was very easy for me to imagine the mindset where those "attacks" look more like advertisements.

The ads mostly focused on Trump's belligerence. His "temperament." They showed clips of Trump threatening violence. "If it were me, I'd punch him in the face!" And all I could think was, "But that's exactly what his supporters want!" They wanted "Big Daddy" to come in with his belt and "be the man" to tell them what's what and dish out discipline and retribution to "those" people.

And that mentality chains into something I've been thinking about for a long, long time. In this country our sense of "justice" is very much focused on taking satisfaction that the "bad guy" has been outed and punished. It has very little to do with restitution and healing for the victim. I can't tell you how many times that by the end of the second commercial break in a Law & Order episode I'd actually forgotten who the victim was because the focus was so deep in the complexities of discovering and catching the perpetrator.

Imagine for a moment a kind of subversive crime drama that did focus on healing and restitution for the victim. The perpetrator and whatever happens to them is hardly ever mentioned if ever. Instead we focus on the struggles of the victim healing. Who their allies are. How they heal. And even if every episode ended with the victim healed and compensated for their suffering we'd somehow be dissatisfied. What about the perpetrator? When are they going to be made to pay.

Combine this cultural mentality about justice with all the reading I've been doing about rural and suburban whites recently I was struck by a thought. I'm concerned that if you offered people this choice...

A) We're going to make all your suffering go away. We're going to fix things and you'll be better.

OR

B) We're going to go after and make sure "those people" (whoever they are) that did this to you are going to suffer as much as you have.

...that they would handily choose B. Choosing (A) reinforces their victim hood where (B) enacts justice.

Extrapolating this out a step further it explains why the phrase "social justice" is particularly enraging to some people. We're using two different ideas about what "justice" is.

We say: Justice for women! They hear: Punish Men!
We say: Justice for blacks! They hear: Punish Whites!

It's why "I never owned slaves" is another common defense. The perpetrators of slavery are all dead. There's no one to punish. For better or worse the question of "justice" for slavery is settled.

Because justice doesn't mean "restitution to the victim." It means "suffering to the perpetrator."

Anyway, just food for thought.