Aaron Bushnell And What It Means To Be Sane Nowadays

People are sometimes willing to go to extreme lengths to demonstrate the strength of their convictions. Some are willing to go so far as to light themselves on fire. Others are willing to kill innocent children. I would never have the strength to do the former, and I would never have the brutality and heartlessness to do the latter.

Most of us cannot begin to contemplate how someone could willingly set themselves on fire in order to suffer perhaps the most painful death imaginable. All to make a statement. Granted, it is a statement that is very important to the person doing it. And granted, such an extreme protest is nearly if not always made in response to extreme, ongoing violence. I do not recall any instance of self-immolation except in a case where thousands of people were being killed.

Most people never really contemplate engaging in any sort of resistance at all. Most would never consider spending an extra dime to buy an organic tomato, would never consider boycotting a shoe manufacturer that uses child labor. To them, such an extreme means of protest as Aaron Bushnell used is simply unfathomable.

Aaron Bushnell’s protest was shocking. I cannot imagine anyone who would not be profoundly disturbed by it. That, I’m sure, is the reason why he chose to do what he did. When most of us have already seen multiple pictures of little children blown to pieces, it would take something as extreme as burning oneself alive to shock people.

We all crave normalcy. Such an action as Bushnell engaged in deprived us of our sense of normalcy. We all want to get back to our normal life talking about sports or watching Netflix or just not talking about people burning themselves or others alive.

So the best thing we can do to get back to our everyday lives is get answers. Any kind of answers will do, even simplistic answers. Especially simplistic answers, so that we do not have to dig too deeply or think too hard about all the violence we and the media would rather us not think about.

So they tell us Aaron Bushnell had mental health issues. That’s certainly possible, since I don’t know what kind of frame of mind one would have to have to light oneself on fire. I cannot fathom the kind of courage or pain or confusion I would…