Redemption Party

We have been lied to and laughed at. Our moral center has been dragged through the town square by the collar. We have been beaten into submission to only see two options as we lionize a few humans soon to be demonized as the skeletons tumble from their closets. We pick ourselves up, stumble back to the ballot box and vote for whoever has convinced us that they have at least a shred of trustworthiness in their brittle bones. An official wins the election by a tiny margin leaving nearly half of the population disgruntled until the next election cycle when we lend our ears to be filled with empty promises of scandal free candidates that do their worst to cast shame on their opponents and frighten us into giving them our trust only to have that trust abolished when the light shines in to illuminate their follies.

We hang each other with giddiness as the pedestal is inevitably kicked out from under the feet of one more human falling from savior to infidel. We fetch the hounds at the first sounds of the rickety pedestal’s collapse, trumpeting our moral high ground. We rejoice in the temporary relief that comes when our shadow is cast upon one individual sacrificed in the name of common decency. We pull ourselves up to the table and feast on their shameful misdeeds all the while declaring that we would have never acted upon the temptation had we held the power. We continue to believe that good and evil reside outside of ourselves. We roam the human desert with an unquenchable thirst for the next bloody character assassination.
Our landscape is purposely littered with pitfalls and stumbling blocks. Sitting on the sidelines we send each other out one at a time to brave the land mines we have planted knowing that it’s only a matter of time before one of us trips outside the boundaries of morality so that we may devour their delicious sins.
Could it finally be time to embrace the darkness within? To take the long cold walk into the depths we haven’t dared to tread? To ask ourselves “What is it in me that casts a shadow on humanity at large?”
Can we create a party of redemption? A party that says “I am flawed, here are my wounds and this is how I will avoid falling into my patterns of deceit and denial.”
When one of us falls can we pick each other up or are we doomed to delight in their destruction?