“How are we any better than those people who we are so afraid of?” A question asked by the character Dale on the television show The Walking Dead.
The Walking Dead, for those uninitiated, is a popular television series based loosely upon a long running comic book of the same name.
Described as a character driven study set against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse. The show gives more rest than most in this genre to the special effects/makeup guys. And it does this by focusing upon the interactions of a small collection of survivors from a variety of backgrounds. It is their struggles, both as individual’s, and as a group, which carries the show.
But back to Dale and his question.
Dale is a gentleman in his mid-sixties who joined the group after losing his wife to the undead part way through their camper van holiday. More than any other, in the minds of the writers, his is a character which has assumed the mantle of the voice for humanity in a world gone mad.
But just because this is the writers intention for him, does not mean that this translates to reality. For instead of representing these qualities, what the character of Dale actually typifies, is the moral self-aggrandizement that so dominates the Left today.
“How are we any better than those people who we are so afraid of?”
Dale asks this question of the whole group in reference to the proposed cold blooded killing of man in his twenties whom they have taken prisoner. A man, who, when injured in the attempted murder of some of Dale’s group (his accomplices in this action either killed or fled), was brought back to Dales camp in order to spare him the fate of being eaten alive. His wound treated, the plan was that he would be blindfolded and driven a good distance from their location and released.
Of course, it turns out to be not so easy as that. Upon fearing he is about to be shot, the young man confesses to knowing of one of the young women whose family owns the barn that holds Dale’s group. (Having known of her, while not being known to her, from their high school days.)
This presents the group with a problem. Clearly, no matter where they release him, the young man would be able direct his more heavily armed/manned group back to the property. A place which, in the name of revenge, they would more than likely be interested in finding. Too, the leader of Dale’s group, having had a chance to witness the character of this young man while under undead attack, is not inclined to trust him at all.
So what are the choices?
1. Release this young man and gamble the lives of your group, which include women and a child, that he will be true to his word and not reveal their location.
2. Try and keep him prisoner, and see if with time he can prove himself trustworthy. Of course, being a barn and not a super max, the young man would sooner rather than later have his captors back to him. A position from which he could inflict terminal harm and/or escape.
3. Kill him.
All in Dale’s group are made aware of these options. The leader of the group, who determines that he will be the one to pull the trigger should that be the majority decision, agonizes over his prospective action.
Oh, and one more tidbit, under the torture of a beating, the young man recounts how his group came upon a man and his two young teenage daughters. And how the men of his group then made that father watch as they all repeatedly raped his girls. Of course, the young man avows that he himself did not partake in the activities.
And so Dale’s question, “How are we any better than those people who we are so afraid of?” It is a question that is imbued with such moral gravitas by the writers.
And in response, not one character in the show gives the patently obvious reply. “We kill, so as to potentially save our own lives, and prevent our women from being turned into rape slaves. Whereas they would kill to achieve the very opposite of this end!”
This is a statement of facts which no one is in dispute of. Not even the character of Dale. But for him, all that is irrelevant when held before his moral equivalence.
And so, obscenely fanning his moral plumage, Dale condemns them all. Not once crediting that any of his group might be shattered at the thought of their prospective action. Instead, all he sees, is his own virtue.
Dale cries out that there must be a better way. Even though practically he can add nothing to the three options already before the group. But that inconvenient fact matters not one whit to him.
That there are times when a man might be forced to walk through shadow to prevent an even greater darkness. And that he might have to undertake this action without ever knowing the peace that would accompany the certainty that he was right. Are facts of life which Dale completely expels from the self-serving reality he has constructed.
That the behavior of the character Dale parallels the Left on so many issues is easy to see. Of course there are the easily identifiable ones, such as the torture of Islamic terrorists, and the targeted assassination of such. But too, this behavior is also recognizable on other issues such as the complete unsustainability of the entitlement system, and the wholesale unworkability of ‘green’ energy.
On none of these issues is there any common ground to be found, because any attempt at dialogue is doomed from the start to run head first into the brick wall of, “You do not care as much as I!”
Such people, by the very nature of their psychological makeup, standing wholly impervious to any argument made from a grounding in objective reality. For they recognize that to accept such, would necessitate an abandonment of the power that comes with being the fundamentally better person, to which they have laid claim.
The character of Dale in The Walking Dead in all his self-serving moral umbrage, is today’s Left. But lest he put you off a series which at times can be quite good, do not fear. For in the last episode to air as of the writing of this, he had his stomach ripped open by a Zombie. So don’t ever say that there is not a ravenous undead killing machine to be found when you truly need one!
Vaughan Starr is a freelance writer. Professional inquiries may be directed to mrvstarr@gmail.com
