The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria.

Frank Herbert

Across the nation, the practice of inflaming passion to facilitate manipulation has ignited a blaze of willful ignorance and hatred.  The will to power has overwhelmed honesty; a conflagration of emotion has charred reason, and left logic in ashes.  Day by day, the blaze of outrage consumes critical thought and scorches consideration and compassion.   Unchecked, this uncontrolled inferno of senselessness threatens not only those deemed enemies, but the wielder of such weapons menaces their own integrity as well.

Where responsibility is abrogated in pursuit of hegemony, those in authority no longer deserve to rule.  To promote hysteria in the pursuit of power is to render oneself unfit to command; no matter what grandiose goals are sought.  Abandoning rationality torches the fabric of justice; and weaves a tangled web of corruption.

Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.

-C.S. Lewis

One of the most pernicious mindsets used to poison public discourse is the notion that  adopting lesser evils to prevent greater harm somehow sanctifies those difficult choices.  Incarceration may prevent individuals from rending the social fabric of interdependence; but depriving other of their liberty is destructive, and the damage caused can not be considered a blessing.  

It may be comforting to redefine the harm caused to others as "good", but it lures one onto the path of corruption.  In a desire to avoid cognitive dissonance , it becomes easy to proclaim that the admirable ends justify loathsome means, and that loathsome means are now hallowed actions.  With such rationalizations, the concept of virtue begins to warp until "virtue" is indistinguishable with ones own desires.  

The carnage wounds all parties involved; the toxin pollutes indiscriminately.