How Fear Can Unite Us For The Worst

They say a Lynch Mob is the truest form of democracy. I used to push that idea to the side thinking it was just the paranoid writings of some cynical philosopher from some far off corner of Europe in the 18th or 19th century. That of course wasn't the truth was it? I mean the eggheads tend to look too deep into history, and they'll find some terrible atrocity that was committed hundreds of years ago and try and group all humans together into one group of ruthless monsters.

Well, I believed that was the case until I was by own stupidity manipulated into becoming part of the lynch mob. And I laughed when I saw what I thought was a rapist burn to death. But that man wasn't a rapist, or any other kind of deviant. He was just a simple husband and father of five children. But that didn't stop me from throwing the lighter up to the man who had lit the pyre that night. If only I had not thrown that lighter all those years ago maybe that man who still be with his wife and children, not with his ashes spread across the town square.

I'm a member of the mob you see in the news, a nameless face that hated someone for no reason other than my neighbors and friends hated them. My punishment for this isn't jail time or, to be hated by my peers, instead my punishment is to be haunted by the inhumanity that I showed that night and to hear screams of an innocent man as he slowly burned alive, every time I close my eyes.

I'm forced to endure the guilt and madness, I suffer, because I was too stupid to think for myself. I'm left by myself forced to mull over what could have been if I didn't toss that lighter to the man at the front of our mob of idiots, or if everyone actually believed the jury when they said that the allegations were baseless, or if maybe someone stood up and said that what we were doing was insane.

But in the end when it came out that the girl had lied about the supposed "rape", our mob had changed from the voice of democracy, to the sneer of anger. And I 15 years later am left alone in misery because I know that every voice counts equally, and that each in its own way is the judge, the jury, and the executioner. And I had stopped justice from being served because I let the mob control me.