We’ve recently witnessed a long line of people who’ve resorted to tears when faced with the glaring spotlight of wrongful or depraved actions. They are like wounded animals, cornered by the reality of their circumstance, nowhere to run or hide, using tears as a last gasp effort to win some sort of reprieve. Some have called them crocodile tears, and I agree to certain extent, but that’s not the whole story. I think it’s the tears of privilege bumping up against countervailing moral, ethical, and legal realities. It’s the knowledge that the free pass given as a birthright is no longer redeemable in the eyes of authorities who exercise real power.
It makes me wonder about their state of mind in those moments. The thing about privilege is you never really know nor acknowledge that you have it until I suppose it’s gone. That is the moment of truth, of reflection, on the loss of something profound and unexplainable. A descent from the clouds and transformed into an other. A person we look at like a thing. An object of disdain and no amount of tears will change their predicament. There’s something poetic about it. A single wrong being righted. A reckoning that we all need to take a step back and consider, examine, study for what it is. It’s like a single transgressor is being ostracized into a vast and scary wilderness while the pack they use to run with closes ranks in shunning them. Power is strange thing, especially when it’s gone. Is it okay to enjoy the spectacle?
