Kony Phony

Oh dear. Here we go again.

There's a video going viral talking about this evil guy named Joseph Kony, talking about how he's capturing children, forcing them to do terrible things, and getting away with it in Uganda. If all that is being said about him is true he is one of the most evil men out there, and I believe what is being said. Girls and women taken advantage of. Children forced to kill their parents. Mutilation and torture of other people. All of it is a real tragedy and tugs at the heart strings.

But I was never one to be swayed blindly by emotion unlike other people, and this thing is fishy all the way around.

Here is a link to an article which has thought a lot more about what appears to be rotten in the state of Uganda, and I shall let it handle the doubt of the issue. I won't presume to tell you whether this is suspicious or not, given how little I've studied the matter, but I don't need to since other people can do that for me.

What I will say is that arresting Kony won't help.

If Kony is killed it will create a power vacuum and the people who followed him will need a new leader and those who once fought him will need a new cause.

This is an extremely dangerous position and so many things could go wrong it's insane. If you take a look at history you will see that very rarely do things actually work out. I'll give you a couple of examples of what might go wrong.

1) Kony's incarceration will lead to his followers finding a new leader. This leader might be more aggressive, more angry and come to be more hated than even Kony.

2) The same thing as number 1, only lots of new leaders pop up and the hydra grows several more heads.

3) Kony and his group completely are completely dissolved and the people he hurt, now without a cause to fight for or entrapped in a desperate fight for survival, have no idea what to do so they elect a leader who ends up as bad as Kony.

4) same as number 3, only they don't get to elect a new leader. Instead the army that captures Kony decides to oppress the people now that the threat is gone.

Any combination of these things might arise as well.

What people don't understand is that freedom and peace are rare. They were fought for with brains and brawn and exist in a precarious balance where they may be lost at any time. Murder, rape, mutilation, genocide, slavery, torture... All of these are normal, albeit wrong, if you study history.

If you think that killing or capturing Kony will fix Uganda think again. The problems are deeper than a single man, and if anyone thinks killing him is going to stop the horror they are wrong. The French during their revolution thought killing the nobles would work, but it didn't. Hundreds of thousands were actually killed because of those revolutionaries. What we have in America is not so simple that you can achieve the same thing in Uganda just by killing another man.

No, those people are blind. They see a dog while they fight a dragon, and they use guns where they should use wisdom.

Instead, these people ignore America, where our freedoms slowly erode. This, the last best hope of man on earth, the only nation which has ever managed to maintain freedom and inspire the world to try and do the same, is slowly sliding into the depths. Rally behind saving that, not behind capturing a man.

Consider what I've said. Don't get suckered in by the video and blindly pledge your support. At the very least think for yourself. The biggest problem we suffer from in this world is that people don't think for themselves.

Seriously yours,
Josh