Trolley Cars and Twitter Troubles

Most people know about the trolley car thought experiment that forces us to consider ethics in an almost impossible situation. If you haven't heard of it, the gist is that you're the operator on a trolley car with no brakes headed directly at five people stuck on the track somehow. If you leave the trolley alone, all five die, but you do have a brief opportunity to change the track to one where only one person is stuck and sure to die if you pull that lever. It's supposed to create conversations about the ethics of action versus inaction and how to think about what beliefs would make either choice the better one. I remember one of the greatest television shows, The Good Place, dramatizing the thought experiment by putting the characters on the actual trolley and plowing through human after human. The show is set in the afterlife, so no actual humans were harmed in the process, but the characters themselves were, justifiably, pretty shaken up by the experience. I think their reaction represents the part of the experiment nobody ever talks about, what comes after the decision. How do you go forward after making a no-win, better-of-two-evils decision? It's not like the imaginary trolley operator chose to be in that dilemma, so in some ways they're a victim as well.

Photo by Alexey Komissarov on Unsplash

But what would you think of the trolley operator who makes either decision and then celebrates it like a win? What does it say about their character if they jump off the trolley and dance around the decimated corpses of the people they ran over?

So, again, not sure if everybody knows, but there was a huge election recently. Afterwards, I'm hearing a lot of responses from a lot of people I know, in real life and in the fake life we call social media, and some in both. I know this election was a difficult election for all of us. Some people I know had real reservations about Harris, based on their priorities and moral beliefs, and not because of some information. Some people I know had major issues against Trump, again for very valid reasons. Some voted on the issue of abortion alone, on both sides, and that's their right. I'm not worried about any of them.

However, some of the people I know who voted for Trump, fellow Christians mostly, told me they couldn't stand the man, but they supported his policies. They told me they didn't like the way he talked about Mexicans and other Latinos, but that we really do need to do something about the border. They told me that they knew that he was no Christian, that he had no personal compunctions about abortion, and had changed his position on the issue at least three times, but that he was still the best candidate for that particular policy. Basically, they lamented to me how much they hated being forced into making what amounted to a better-of-two-evils decision, where either way, they had to choose a candidate that offended their sensibilities. 

Imagine my surprise and disappointment when they hopped right off that trolley as soon as it screeched to a stop, pointed in the faces of the people they had run over, and started doing the YMCA. Imagine my confusion and repulsion when some of those same people who told me before the election that they were "holding their noses" and voting for Trump, let go of those same noses and started typing things like "cope and seethe" and "liberal tears" along with all kinds of hateful, celebratory memes.

It's not that I didn't expect celebration. A win is a win, after all. It's not even that I didn't expect some ugliness and wickedness from some of team Trump, especially the "your body, my choice" faction. But for those people I know personally who told me that they were grieved about their decision and that they didn't support his attitude, his anger, his divisiveness, or his hateful speech, for those people to shed their ashes and sackcloth the morning after the election and start imitating his same attitude, anger, and speech - that's really got me praying for peace and forgiveness this week.

I'm also seeing a lot of anger on the Harris side, and a lot of disappointment and sadness and fear as well. I get it. I'm seeing people saying they're opting out of community with Trump voters, and don't come recruiting them for any more issues. I see people unfollowing and unfriending Trump voters en masse on their social media channels. Listen, through his example, Trump has given a lot of people permission to be their worst selves. Do what you have to do to have a good day, uninterrupted by the ugliness of others. I hear some of my people saying that God is still on his throne, and I'm absolutely sure of that, but that doesn't mean He doesn't let us do the stupidest things and then suffer the consequences of them.

For myself, I've unfollowed a few people myself, not because they voted for Trump, but because they either lied to me about their reasons for doing so and because their behavior after the election reveals that I may not have known them very well, and shouldn't have followed them to begin with. My comments section might have a little spice, but I made a decision a few years ago to keep it hate-free, and since then, while I hate to brag, I've earned a black belt in block fu.