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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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What evil lives in the heart of man who can kill his wife, daughters?

By David McElroy · November 6, 2018

There are days when I have hope for the future of this world, times when I can believe that we will collectively rise above our history and learn to be the loving and rational creatures that we’re capable of becoming.

But today hasn’t been one of those days.

I was already down on the human race for other reasons, but I reached a tipping point this evening when I read about a Colorado man who has confessed to murdering his pregnant wife, Shannon, and their two little girls, Bella and Celeste, who were 4 and 3.

I know that thousands of people die every day. I know that many of them are murdered. But there’s something about seeing this smiling and apparently loving family — and knowing this man could murder those innocent girls — that stabs me in the heart and makes me wonder why God puts up with what his crowning creation — made in his image — have turned into.

I know there are stories like this all the time. I know there always have been. I know that humans do horrible things to each other. But something about this particular story shakes me.

I think it’s because these people seem so much like me. That’s not a very good way to judge the seriousness of a crime, but there’s something about them which makes them seem like people I could know.

With most murders, I can look at the people involved or the circumstances and know those people aren’t like me. I don’t live in an inner-city housing project. I’m not involved in illegal drug transactions. I’m not stupid enough to be friends with crack-heads who are going to rob me. I’m sorry for such victims, but I don’t identify with people in those sorts of circumstances.

But this was an affluent middle-class family whose lives look a lot like what I consider normal. The lives they projected on social media were so happy and normal. They showed a happy mother and father doing happy things with their children — and this might scare me more than anything else.

In almost every case I’m aware of, unhappy people project lies on social media about their lives and their family. In case after case, people’s social media lives are lies. When I know people’s private lives — and I know how much hatred and unhappiness there is behind the scenes — I’m stunned to see those people projecting something so different on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter.

One of the worst-kept secrets of modern life is that millions and millions of people are miserable and their lives are failing apart, but because we live in a media-driven culture where image is everything, we project lies. We project the fantasy which we desperately hope that other people will believe is true.

The few people who are willing to tell the truth about themselves — on social media and often in person — are frequently shunned. Others aren’t comfortable being exposed to the truth of their misery. So people who share about their loneliness or unhappiness or depression often retreat behind a mask, because they quickly get the message that their vulnerability isn’t wanted by anybody.

In this Colorado case, Chris Watts apparently strangled his wife and his two little girls. He then buried his wife, Shannon Watts, in a shallow grave. He dumped his little girls’ bodies into commercial oil tanks.

I know people who appear to be just like this family. I see their pictures on Facebook. I see their shallow projections of happiness. But the lies of social media are just a thin veneer on the ugly unhappiness lurking beneath.

It terrifies me to think how easily this could happen with specific people I know. My heart grows cold when I think of specific people who I think are capable of snapping and doing these sorts of unspeakable things. And I just don’t know how human beings can be like this.

I don’t understand how people continue projecting the lies that they do. I don’t know why people agree to keep living such lies. I don’t see why parents keep their children in such toxic environments, where they’re learning that this is what a family is like — so those children will grow up and bring another generation of misery into the world.

I know I’m projecting a lot from this one awful story, but the truth is that I’m always worried about this sort of thing happening with people I know. We’re all likely to see stories as evidence for what we already believe — and I’m no exception — but I see this as a chilling reminder of what could happen to people I know.

There’s so much that I don’t understand about the way humans live. It stuns me that people happily obey their childhood brainwashing rather than consider whether maybe they might have been taught lies. They never stop to think that maybe their lives need to change and that they need to throw off dysfunctional cultural norms.

I’m terrified by what politicians do, but the obedience and reverence of the unthinking sheep — blindly following their culture’s expectations — terrify me far more then the openly visible evil done by the politicians they select and support.

If aliens came to this planet and put the human race on trial — and they asked me why we deserved to exist as a species — I’m not sure I’d have a good answer.

There are days when I’m optimistic about our future. There are days when I see the good things about us and I see how we can sometimes be loving and creative — how we can grow and become better creatures than we were.

Those are the days when I see more beauty and experience more intelligence and grace and love from certain people. I don’t have enough of those days, but they’re the only ones that make me willing to put up with the ones such as today.

I don’t know what sort of evil could allow a man to kill his wife, but it takes an even deeper level of evil to imagine that a man could murder his own little girls. That chills me in ways that I have trouble explaining.

There is no role in the world that I want more than being a loving and caring husband and father. I cannot imagine any circumstance which could turn me — or any decent person — into this sort of killer.

I grieve for the murdered Shannon Watts. I grieve for murdered Bella and Celeste. I grieve for the unborn baby who will never take his or her first breath.

But most of all, I grieve for the living — for those who will never know these victims — who are living lives of unhappiness that could end up going down the same shocking path.

We humans must learn more emotionally healthy ways to live. Modern society feeds the toxic evil which makes it easier than ever to hide the evil that lies lurking in cold and dishonest hearts.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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