Juanita has done a great job covering this as she obviously has an inside track. So, I will not add any details here. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Besides, I usually get long-winded here. So, I will offer two rhetorical questions that the beloved community here can chew on if they like. Some of these have obvious academic answers, so this is more on a philosophical level.

1. How is it that people like Alex Jones exist?

Yes, I took Abnormal Psychology and Psychopathology. I know the literal textbook definition of this. This is usually where “well actually” guy comes busting out the DSM-V with the textbook definitions of psychopathy and sociopathy. Yup, we all know that. What we also know is that those conditions really aren’t curable. That makes the second question easier to answer in his case.

However, on a personal or philosophical level it is quite disturbing. He made up to 800,000 a day knowing full well that he was not only lying but also really hurting those people. That takes a special kind of cruelty. I’m not a psychologist and I can’t practice counseling outside of a school setting, but it produces a vexing question. How much do people like Jones really know? He knows that his lies were in fact lies. He knew he was making money off it. He willfully spurred his minions on those poor families. I can’t tell you how the psychopathic brain works exactly. I don’t know how much they are really cognizant of and how much they are able to compartmentalize away from whatever humanity they actually have.

2. How do we decide exactly who gets redemption and who doesn’t

I know two things. First, I know that sociopaths and psychopaths cannot really be redeemed and it is dangerous to try. Alex Jones doesn’t deserve to be redeemed. Donald Trump doesn’t deserve to be redeemed. Tucker Carlson doesn’t deserve to be redeemed. These are people that know exactly what they are doing and are aware on some level of the damage they are doing. As I said above, I don’t know exactly how much they know, but at least a large part of them knows.

The second thing I know is that some people can be redeemed because they already have to a greater or lesser extent. People have turned on these folks after the fact. Usually, they need a little legal pressure to do so, but they have done it. So, how do we draw the line between the redeemable and the unredeemable? If they can be redeemed then what does that redemption look like?

The best analogy I know comes from my own religious education. Forgive me for those not religious. Yet, that word is the very word we are concerned with. In order to get absolution, we first have to admit what we have done wrong. Then. we get some sort of penance depending on the offense. I think a number of people skip one or both of those. Some people admit they are wrong, but expect immediately to be welcomed in without atoning for their sins. Others pull the “why don’t we all just get along” without actually admitting they’re wrong. Both of those need to be present for it to work. Yet, none of that answers the question above. We can’t redeem everyone and yet we also can’t write everyone off either. So, what gives?

Theologians tell us that God forgives and forgives absolutely. It has taken a lifetime to understand that what they are talking about is really redemption and not forgiveness. Forgiveness is really a human condition. It means we simply drop those negative feelings and move on. That has always been the secret. Forgiveness is more about us than it is about them. We don’t allow that anger and pain to consume us. Yet, it doesn’t mean that the relationship returns to normal or even at all.

Redemption, on the other hand, is a return of the relationship. That’s what the theologians call forgiveness from God. The slate is wiped clean and all transgressions are forgotten. Most of us aren’t capable of that. We have to protect our psyche and someone that repeatedly runs roughshod over our psyche cannot return to the previous condition. We can leave the pain behind and refuse to allow that person’s actions to occupy our thoughts. We can’t treat them the same way as before though.

This is where racism, xenophobia, sexism, and homophobia comes in. It is where the Q nonsense comes in. It is where the anti-vax nonsense comes in. This topic is the one topic that ties it all together. Yesterday, we looked at conservative social media and whether they could have a safe space to spew their hatred. There’s a reason why they want and need that safe space. When we shun that kind of thought we don’t get rid of it. We just drive it underground where it can’t readily be seen.

The question comes on whether someone can let their hate flag fly and then later live to regret it. If they do then is there a path back to redemption for them? We have seen numerous people recant their feelings on the vaccine once they’ve landed in the hospital. Should they survive, can they be forgiven and can they be redeemed? They can be forgiven relatively easily, but that doesn’t mean they are redeemed.

It comes down to recognizing windows of opportunity. Hundreds if not thousands of anti-vaxxers and Q devotees are realizing that they backed the wrong horse. They realize they were lied to. They realize they were duped. The question comes on whether we are capable of extending the olive branch to welcome them back to normal society.

The same is true of racists, homophobes, sexists, and xenophobes. There is that key moment where everything comes tumbling down. I say this because I’ve experienced it myself. Those feelings were more private because I knew they were wrong. I was able to cast them aside and be welcomed in. However, I have to admit that I had not gone out on a limb to make an ass out of myself either.

That’s how I know there are a lot of these folks out there. They feel the way they do, but they are too polite and even too ashamed to be publicly outed. Without a path to redemption they have to stay in that space. They exist in the shadows between everything we know that is good and everything we know that isn’t. It’s the main reason why we are left wondering how some of our elected officials get where they are in the first place.

There is something within ourselves that doesn’t allow us to redeem. In ourselves it is obvious that shame overwhelms us. In others, it is anger and jealousy of a former scourge getting credit for their conversion. For others, it is a lack of trust that the conversion is real. We’ve been burned before. We have to take that chance. Otherwise, it will always be us versus them.