We started out talking about the weather, as we often do. But before long, we were talking about something much darker: what happens when a society gets so accustomed to violence that it stops recognizing just how wrong that violence is.
We talked about immigration enforcement, police shootings, racism, the death penalty, and the public’s willingness to excuse things that should trouble all of us. And beneath those subjects was one question we couldn’t shake:
What happens to us when we learn to accept the unacceptable?
Consider the way we respond when someone is hurt or killed by law enforcement. Before we even know what happened, the public debate often turns to the victim. What were they doing? Why were they there? Did they deserve it?
When the person involved is Black or brown, those questions can become a reflex. Instead of asking whether the use of force was justified, people begin searching for reasons to excuse it. The victim enters the court of public opinion already presumed guilty, simply because of how they look.
That’s not justice. It’s prejudice dressed up as judgment.
And it doesn’t stop with race. Women and other people who find themselves at the center of a public controversy can face a similar rush to blame the person who was harmed. We seem to have an almost instinctive need to find some reason why the victim brought the suffering on themselves.
Why? Because if we can convince ourselves that the victim was somehow responsible, we don’t have to imagine that the same thing could happen to us.
We can tell ourselves we’re safe. We can tell ourselves the system works. We can tell ourselves that whatever happened was an isolated incident involving someone who must have done something wrong.
But that comfort comes at a cost.
When we explain away someone else’s suffering, we make it easier for the next person to suffer, too.
That brings us to immigration enforcement and the growing concern discussed in our conversation about agents operating in ways that make it difficult for ordinary people to know who they’re dealing with. We talked about reports of armed, unidentified individuals approaching people and about the fear that comes with not knowing whether the people confronting you are legitimate law enforcement officers.
Imagine being approached by armed strangers. Imagine trying to determine whether you’re in danger while they’re telling you what to do. Now imagine that the incident is later explained away by officials who insist that everything happened as it should have.
What are people supposed to think? What are they supposed to do?
And why should anyone have to accept that kind of uncertainty from the people claiming authority over them?
The discussion also raised disturbing accounts involving U.S. citizens caught up in immigration enforcement and an incident in California involving an allegedly intoxicated officer. These accounts deserve scrutiny, not automatic acceptance or dismissal. The larger principle, however, shouldn’t be controversial: authority does not place anyone above accountability.
If we believe in the rule of law, that belief has to apply consistently. It cannot depend on whether we like the person accused of wrongdoing, whether we agree with the agency involved, or whether the victim belongs to a group we instinctively distrust.
And this is where the conversation becomes bigger than any one incident.
We’ve talked before about desensitization to violence. It’s what happens when repeated exposure to cruelty changes our sense of what’s normal. Something that once would have horrified us becomes familiar. Then it becomes tolerable. Eventually, we may even begin to defend it.
Consider the idea of public executions or broadcasting executions for people to watch. We can argue about punishment, deterrence, and justice, but we should also ask what we’re teaching ourselves when we turn death into a spectacle.
What happens when we stop seeing a human being and start seeing an example to be made?
What happens when suffering becomes entertainment, or when cruelty becomes a demonstration of strength?
We shouldn’t assume that watching violence leaves us untouched. Repeated exposure can affect how we perceive other people, how we respond to suffering, and what we consider acceptable. When violence becomes routine, our moral alarm bells can grow quieter precisely when we need them most.
That is one reason the death penalty came up in our discussion. The question isn’t simply whether someone deserves punishment. It’s whether we can build a just society by normalizing the deliberate taking of human life as an answer to wrongdoing—especially when our institutions and judgments are not infallible.
We cannot claim to oppose violence while treating certain people’s suffering as inconsequential.
We cannot demand accountability from individuals while refusing to examine the culture that enables them.
And we cannot keep distancing ourselves from the problem by insisting that it’s all somebody else’s fault.
That’s the uncomfortable part. This isn’t only about politicians, law enforcement agencies, or people who openly celebrate cruelty. It’s also about the rest of us: what we excuse, what we ignore, what we share, and what we allow to become ordinary.
When we see an injustice and immediately search for a justification, we’re participating in the process that makes the next injustice easier to accept.
When we assume the worst about someone because of their race, we’re helping prejudice pass itself off as common sense.
When we watch violence become public spectacle and shrug, we’re helping redraw the boundaries of what society considers normal.
We have to take responsibility—not because every one of us committed the harm, but because all of us have a stake in whether it continues.
That means holding people in power accountable. It means questioning the stories we’re told, looking carefully at evidence, and refusing to let political loyalty determine whether we care about someone’s rights. It means recognizing the humanity of people whose lives and experiences are different from our own.
Most of all, it means refusing to let repetition become justification.
The fact that something happens over and over doesn’t make it right. The fact that people have learned to tolerate it doesn’t make it harmless. And the fact that confronting it is uncomfortable doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to do so.
If we want change, we cannot normalize the very things we claim to oppose.
We have to hold others accountable. We have to hold ourselves accountable.
And we have to remember that a society’s character is revealed not just by how it treats the people it admires, but by how it treats the people it has learned to disregard.
We are Right and Freedom. And freedom means refusing to accept cruelty as the price of order, or injustice as the cost of doing business.
ChatGPT used to summarize our discussion transcript into a blog format.
