Lumpy Pot

When folks of a tribe do something reprehensible and violent, the rest of the tribe has two paths of least resistance:

1. argue that the action was actually good and moral ("the enemy is so dangerous, these actions were actually warranted!")
2. argue that the action was actually taken or fomented by some other group ("the enemy is so evil, they orchestrated the whole thing!")

You can see both responses exemplified in the reactions to violence accompanying the George Floyd protests in 2020, and the reactions to January 6 2021 storming of the US Capitol.

During the George Floyd protests

The blue tribe response to protest-related violence was primarily that the actions were good and moral – one personal friend on Facebook exemplified this when he said that he would happily let his house be burned to the ground if it would further civil rights in the US.

In short: unchecked police violence is so evil, that the violence is warranted in search of a greater net good.

There were murmurs about protests turning violent due to instigations by the Proud Boys or neo-nazis or off-duty police officers, but these never became the primary narrative as far as I could tell.

During the storming of the US Capitol

In contrast, the red tribe response to the storming of the US Capitol has been to frame it as the work of antifa/the deep state/other enemy conspirators.

Even those denouncing the violence seem to have difficulty doing so without making some allusion to conspirators from the other side.

Constants

One thing that seems constant to all mob action is the firm belief that, no matter how bad the actions taken by your team were, the other team is far worse.

The Biblical response

If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

— John 15:19

Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

— James 1:27

Christians are not meant to side with worldly tribes. We should be consistent in recognizing evil no matter who it is perpetrated by.

The red and blue tribes are of the world. Keep yourself unstained!

Imagine Bob, a blogger-cum-journalist who primarily writes stories about how bad Japanese cars are. Ostensibly his site says that he writes about "thinking critically about the automotive industry" or "honest car talk" or something, but all his best stuff is about how bad Japanese cars are compared to the rest of the world.

He writes most positively about US-manufactured cars and is neutral towards European manufacturers.

Any time there is a news story about a Toyota or Honda malfunctioning or being unreliable, he writes about it. He makes much hay out of any story where the details are unclear or aren't fully known yet. If clarifying details arise later, he never updates his old posts.

He spent years writing about unintended acceleration issues in Toyota Camrys in the mid-2000s. Whenever any negative detail popped up, no matter what the source, he would be there with another somber post.

In retrospect, only about 10% of those posts were actually meaningfully accurate, but it doesn't matter – the fact that the unintended accelerations were eventually shown to be caused by defects has been used to shield himself from accusations of being a conspiracy theorist ever since.

When he started out, he mostly implied that Japanese cars sucked due to manufacturer incompetence, but after so many years cataloging malfunctions he feels he has no choice but to assume malicious intent. By the end of the decade, most of his posts about Camrys were more rants than journalism – in his eyes, anyone buying a Toyota was a dupe who deserved the fiery death they had coming.

You could call Bob a "Toyota detractor". He has great motivation to say negative things about Japanese auto makers (that's what his readers expect), and no motivation to say anything positive.

Should you read Bob's posts?

No. If you're an outsider hoping for a holistic perspective on what car to buy, you won't get it from Bob. He will recommend a few Ford or Chevy vehicles that might be worth looking into, but you will never get an intellectually honest comparison of the cars on the market today.

Even if you're an industry expert commanding a broad view of the benefits and downsides of various vehicles, Bob's posts aren't worth reading. His regular readers never hold him accountable when he shares bad information, and it's not worth your time to try to sort out the truth from the fanfic.

The other side

Imagine Alice, a writer working at a Toyota dealership. She's worked there for over ten years. A few years ago she started blogging about her experiences and has built up a sizable following.

She writes on her own time and isn't paid by Toyota, but she almost never says anything negative about the company. She wrote very little about the unintended acceleration issues, though she was quick to let her readers know about the weather mat recall when the NHTSA investigation determined that the cause was weather mats getting stuck under the gas pedal.

You could call Alice a "Toyota booster."

Should you read Alice's posts?

Probably not. Even though she's less likely to be lying than Bob, if there are any serious issues that make Toyota look bad relative to other car manufacturers, she is unlikely to share them.

Even though everything she writes is factual, she meticulously leaves out any context that would give readers the ability to use those facts to make an educated comparison between Toyotas and other cars.

Alice's posts don't give you any appreciable advantage when it comes to making your next car purchase.

So who should you read?

If you filter all the detractors and boosters out of your feed, and learn to close the browser tab as soon as you realize you're reading one of them, you're ahead of the game.

There is good analysis to be found, but don't stress out about finding it. If you're diligent in avoiding bad sources, but you have some friends who care about the full truth and distrust anyone taking a "side" for or against Toyota, you may eventually get to read about what actually happened to those Toyota Camrys. Oftentimes the most truthful answer is "well, it's complicated."

If you start talking about applying the Bible in pro-life circles, some folks will start accusing you of being impractical. "We're not going to just snap our fingers and suddenly live in a biblical society that obeys all of God's commands. We need to take small steps in the right direction!" These folks sometimes call themselves incrementalists.

What are we incrementing towards?

Most folks in the pro-life community seem to misunderstand God's commands. They have a strong sense that God hates murder (correct), and that their mission is to decrease the amount of murder in the world (broadly incorrect), and that God wants them to change the nation's legislation to reduce murders per capita (very incorrect).

God's commands to decrease murders are personal, given directly to every individual. "You shall not murder." You, personally, are expected to reduce your murders per capita to zero.

God's commands to his people about other people's murders are a bit different. "He who strikes any man mortally shall surely be put to death."

We are not commanded to reduce national murders to zero, we are commanded to put murderers to death.

What biblical incrementalism is not

• legislation that makes it more difficult to kill your baby
• punishing murder, but calling it something other than murder
• punishing an accomplice (e.g. a doctor) but not the other guilty parties
• any new legislation that treats abortion like some new special case rather than murder

None of these things move us closer to what God has commanded.

What is biblical incrementalism?

We must take steps in the direction of obeying God. Here are biblical steps we could take:

• Remove any lines from existing legislation that except abortion from being treated as murder
• Punish murder with the death penalty
• Punish false witnesses in capital cases with the death penalty
• Execute the convicted by community stoning, not back-room poisoning
• Convince district attorneys to seek out sufficient witnesses (two or more) and bring murder cases against parents and doctors who kill unborn babies

I am only interested in incrementing towards what God commands us in the Bible.