The Virus of Extremism
Extremism spreads infectious propaganda like a virus, encouraging its victims to reject a recommended inoculation. It views all antidotes as the affliction, so it can divert attention away from a possible solution toward its own concoction or resolution as the magic elixir.
Irrational radicalism transmits like a fever and is even more contagious because it can engulf both mind and body. Once it has taken hold, this infection doesn’t want to let you go. It is driven by emotion and fervor and is a reckless driver that knows no bounds. Preying on the innocent and unsuspecting, it’ll take passengers on a wild goose chase to a seemingly unknown, but contrived destination.
It’s exhilarating and captivating, as it straps enthusiasts in for a roller coaster ride to keep everyone going around and up and down, as if in a theme park of cheap thrills and chills. Once it has your attention it wants to keep you, turning scouts into addicts so they keep coming back for more of what unprincipled extremes propagate.
Admirers will hang on for another excursion, wanting more because they’ve been taken on an adventurous voyage that is exhilarating. This has prompted the most vulnerable to be courageous, but only if they hang on to a calculated plan they believe is compassionately inspired. A devious revolutionary will embolden their followers, daring them to brave the unknown by nurturing self aggrandizement.
This blind force is emboldened while misleading recruits by using synthetic, premeditated tactics to retain their trust and loyalty. The conspirator is not driven by intellect, conscience, allegiance to its troops or good judgement. It is irrational and underhanded, coercing its following to succumb to a self made authority.
Believers now enter the Twilight Zone, becoming euphoric, defensive, angry, militant and irrational as reality was misportrayed by deceit. The innocent were led down an irrational path away from morality and truth, which is where they thought they were being taken. It was a trick. Instead devoted cavaliers were abducted by a conspirator proliferating superstition and fear. That big leaguer wrote their own script, and directed their own production using an elaborate facade. How could we have guessed?
Willfulness doesn’t regulate itself by following law. Morality is connected to freedom, not restriction, manipulation and unharnessed authority. Freedom only belongs to those that are rational. By imposing force to control and benefit from passive obedience taken by force, is a strategy used by oligarchs when they’re given the stage.
Dawn Allen, Patterson
