There's a fun saying we like to repeat to ourselves to make ourselves feel better to absolve ourselves of collective stupidity.
"It's never the ones you'd expect."
Except, well, they should be the ones we expect.
You probably know what I'm about to write before I even write it. We extremists who notice patterns (the worst kind of extremism, to be sure) have written memes since time immemorial to commemorate the exact story that unfolds here.
So, yes, it's exactly what you're thinking right now.
The Michigan State Police said in a press release that 43-year-old William Nicholas Horner and 42-year-old Stacey Jean Horner were arrested after an investigation found that they had allegedly looked at online files of child sexually abusive material.
Courtesy of reporter Andy Ngô, here are a few of William's post under his transgender identity, "Ashley."
The counts of criminal computer use carry a possible sentence of 10 years in prison, while the child porn possession counts carry the same possible sentence.
You'll be destroyed if you notice the correlation here. Even stoic pastors, with their eyes turned heavenward, will tell you not to judge so hastily.
"You can't tell if a middle-aged man with purple hair in a dress is a pedophile simply by looking at him," they say. "After all, what would Jesus do?"
Well, as it so happens, Christ left a prescription for this kind of person and it involves giant stones, ropes, and deep water, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
I can't absolutely say if the charges are true, not only because that would be libel before due process has had its say, but because that would be a lie on my part and "thou shalt not lie." This means my reason for writing is not to convince you that William or his wife are guilty. They will have their day in court, Feb. 2nd in the 97th District Court as it so happens, and they have the same right to impartiality before the law that all of us do (a radical idea these days, I know!).
No, my reason for writing is that I'm tired of us pretending that there aren't certain indicators and patterns in our fallen world - indicators and patterns that we irresponsibly ignore, and often at the cost of our lives or the lives of those around us. We ignore these patterns because we have a cultural mandate in the West:
"Thou Shalt Be Nice."
- It isn't nice to notice that there's something very broken about the black American community that causes 6% of the population (black males) to cause nearly half of all violent crime in our nation. That's racist.
- It isn't nice to notice that adherence to the most traditional Islamic principles and beliefs creates people who are fine with killing non-Muslims en masse through holy war. That's Islamophobia.
- It isn't nice to notice that the migrants flooding our southern border share little moral or social cohesion with the nation at large, causing higher incidents of crime like rape and trafficking while degrading laws and other constitutional contracts that makes our nation a nation. That's xenophobic.
- And in a society that worships sex in ways ancient cults devoted to Aphrodite and Ashtoreth could have only dreamed of, it isn't nice to point out that grown men in wigs and lipsticks who use filters to make themselves look like teenagers on social media might have an interest in pederasty. That's transphobic.
From Andy Ngô:
Horner uses filters on social media photos to look like a teen, making it difficult for me to initially confirm the matching social media account.
When we're told not to notice patterns with discernment, but the patterns still exist, it creates a two-fold problem.
On one hand, those who have been told there are no patterns become very suspicious of the pattern-noticers. They begin to observe certain characteristics about these pattern-noticers that repeat in a predictable way. They then, without realizing they have become pattern-noticers themselves, form processes to keep tabs on them.
They might even flag your receipts for Bass Pro Shop!
The second problem is those who, upon taking a reddish-looking pill that opens their eyes to the patterns, become hyper aware of everything around them and find extensive patterns of the highest order in every minute detail of society. They begin wondering about the Jews and their Jewish tunnels, perhaps. Maybe they run a social media account where they infer that the problems in black American communities are actually due to inferior intelligence and evolutionary development. They start looking down their noses at the regular pattern-noticers who don't understand the complexities of great noticing minds like theirs.
And so we get the world we've created in 2024. The only difference is the power dynamic between the two groups. The White House, DOJ, FBI, federal courts, most of Congress, Hollywood, academia, and many Fortune 500 companies are in the first group. A bunch of random dudes in their gym shorts posting memes to X are in the second.
Telling people not to notice patterns out of a sense of decency and niceness is how we got in this squishy mess. Older generations called it sweeping the truth under the rug. By suppressing the truth because we've been afraid to be called bigots (GOP leaders of yesteryear used to practically burst into flame at such an accusation!), we've condemned ourselves to a world run on lies.
And lies kill.
- Lies kill when we say it's compassionate to let unvetted migrants into our communities by the millions without any regard for our neighbors's safety or even the safety of the vulnerable being trafficked in the midst of such migration.
- Lies kill when we say a white police officer kneeled on the neck of a black man in a racist act of white supremacy.
- Lies kill when we say the president of the United States praised the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville or incited an insurrection.
- Lies kill when we withhold the description of black criminals who commit murder in an effort not to appear racist.
- Lies kill when we focus on an old man's love of ice cream and not the criminal financial dealings he and his family have had with internationally recognized villains.
- Lies kill when we declassify the Houthis as a terror group to spite the former president, then reclassify them after they launch terror attacks that cripple global shipping.
- Lies kill when we push vaccine narratives from Big Pharma on billions of people around the globe while continuing to fund sketchy gain-of-function research in despotic nations that have no regard for human life.
- Lies kill when we pretend that the vast majority of dogs who kill people aren't pit bulls.
- Lies kill when we tell people "body acceptance" is better than healthy food and exercise.
- Lies kill when we say the Patriarchy and white supremacy are systemically oppressive entities and that the only way to make up for past discrimination is current discrimination.
- Lies kill when we tell girls to cut off their breasts because they're actually boys.
- Lies kill when we pretend certain authority figures don't need accountability and aren't capable of dark deeds, especially authority figures who are charming and charismatic (Ravi Zacharias comes to mind).
- Lies kill when we say a baby is a clump of cells.
If you accept those lies, then you live by them. Do you think God won't hold us accountable for all the death and destruction caused because we accepted those lies? How does God view the one He calls "the father of lies"?
Do you think "it wasn't the person I expected" will suffice as an excuse?
If not, then you better start paying attention. But gain wisdom, or else paying attention will do you little good (Proverbs 1:5-9). As the Bible says, knowledge without love makes one proud (1 Cor. 8:1) and is altogether worthless (1 Cor. 13:2), and some knowledge is simply a lie (Col. 2:8).
How do you gain that wisdom? Well, you need a standard - a referent. The Bible has some thoughts on what or Who that might be for those who are interested in hearing it.
