The Logic Failure
We have a logic problem in this country. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say we have a critical thinking deficiency, and it’s spread across a disturbing percentage of the population.
Illogical arguments dominate the airwaves. We raise our pitchforks at guns, at cars, at whatever inanimate object is most convenient to blame for tragedy, anything except the person who actually made the choice. Anything except accountability.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: people can be evil. People can be selfish. People can be reckless, careless, and cruel. All of that exists, whether we like it or not. And pretending otherwise doesn’t make us moral, it makes us intellectually lazy.
And since it’s me, and since I’m fresh off an accident, you know I’m about to make this about motorcycles. Sorry. Not sorry.
For reasons I still don’t fully understand, we demonize motorcycles. The moment a motorcycle is involved in a crash, we collectively decide the rider must have had it coming. “Well… motorcycles are dangerous.” As if that’s analysis. As if that’s logic.
Meanwhile, we conveniently ignore the driver who was staring at their phone, trying to fire off a text after two high-gravity IPAs at the local brewery. We overlook the driver fiddling with the radio, the GPS, eating a fucking sandwich, steering with their knees, multitasking like an idiot piloting a two-ton missile through traffic.
But none of that matters, because you know… motorcycles.
They’re loud. Riders look mean. They don’t match the acceptable aesthetic of the evening commute.
So clearly, they’re to blame.
This same broken reasoning shows up everywhere. We blame guns instead of the sociopathic person who aimed one and pulled the trigger in cold blood. We blame knives instead of the lunatic who stabbed four people in a blind rage. We blame the state when someone dies in a blizzard because snow removal didn’t happen during the goddamned blizzard.
We refuse, over and over again, to separate tools from decisions.
And now I find myself standing here, having survived an accident that was 100% caused by a driver’s illegal and reckless decision, listening to people subtly (or not so subtly) blame me for getting up afterward.
Pair that with today’s headlines, and I’m left with one question rattling around my skull: What the fuck happened to us? When did we forget how to think? When did we stop questioning, evaluating, assessing cause and responsibility? When did we decide that feelings and optics mattered more than facts?
Seriously.
What. The. Fuck. Happened?
