On an Individual Level we are Better People Than This.

A seventeen-year-old kid illegally carrying an automatic weapon, driven by his mother to the scene of a protest, shoots and kills two people and wounds another. Certainly, this should be seen as an atrocity, a shameful action, aided and abetted by an irresponsible adult.

Nope! Not in this America. He’s a hero! In the eyes of some, he filled the gap that the authorities left unfilled. Borrowing a term from my friends in England, I should feel “gobsmacked.” I don’t. I just feel fear and concern for the possibility that some of us can justify the killing of others for protesting social injustices.

As bad as this whole event was, the issue I’m commenting on is the division in the nation’s moral foundation it demonstrates. More precisely, what’s left of the edifice of our moral foundation. This is not so much a matter of who’s justified in making him a hero. It’s about the evidence of how much more disparate our views of morality get every day.

Here’s the upshot. We no longer have an agreed moral code that determines right and wrong. Our ideological possession has taken over and we see every action from the point of view prescribed by our political affiliations.

There is only one non-violent way out of this dilemma. Reflect on your own moral standards and don’t feed the hungry wolf who lives in all of us. Or as psychologist Jordan Peterson puts is "control the malevolence in our own hearts."