The following post is a highlight from 2021:
In the introduction to his book “The Content Trap,” author Bharat Anand asks readers to consider what caused the Yellowstone Fires of 1988, which lasted for months and destroyed over 1.3 million acres of the world’s oldest, and one of our nation’s most treasured, national parks. The traditional story places the blame on a worker who dropped a single, still-lit cigarette. Anand disagrees.
The cigarette certainly triggered this fire, but a million cigarettes are dropped every single day. That year (likely even that day), other cigarettes and, for that matter, lightning strikes, fell in Yellowstone. Why did this one spark so much damage? Anand’s point has to do with the pre-existing conditions, which made something that is benign in most other circumstances, a trigger for incredible destruction.
Yesterday, as protestors stormed the Capitol, Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican, said, “We (Americans) are not what we are seeing today …” Others remarked how shocking it was to see the sort of political unrest common to other countries, here in America. And, of course, it was shocking.
But we’d better be clear on why. It’s not because somehow Americans, even those who love freedom and wish to protect the remarkable gift that is our nation, are somehow exempt from the Fall. It’s not because America has some sort of divine pass to last forever. It’s not because the rules that govern nations and civilizations, which have been proven over and over again throughout history, somehow do not apply to us.