There’s critical discussion that the rioting of 2020 is dissimilar to the Capitol Hill riot this week. My value system is built upon behaviorism in that violent actions are violent actions regardless of motivation. What I considered is, as a whole, how does motivation affect the perception of violence, where some violence is both excused and encouraged and some violence is deplored and condemned.

The answer to this seeming contradiction is violence is morally acceptable – and it is a moral justification and choice – when in service of hypothetical compassion, and because our political divisiveness is built upon emotion and not reason, partisan emotions of tyranically determined compassion overwhelm the most base expression of compassionate humanity, and that is all violence towards other humans is wrong and is never justified.

That our political beliefs of today – belief of whose emotional version of compassion is most compassionate – and not the masqueraded real matters of environment, equal rights, economic prioritization, and national identity (among more), lends itself too easily for violence to solve the very inflated perceived problems using very strong contrived feelings.

It’s not about what’s right. It’s about what feels right. And that’s how Americans morally justify, knowingly condone, and unapologetically support their violence but not others’ violence.