The Morality of Lynching
As the Bell Curve flattens, more murders seem motiveless. Children shoot other children in schools, strangers push strangers in front of trains. But most murders are still reasoned. A perceived enemy, a rival in business or love, or a simple envy. But we humans always expand our world and encounter new risks. In the jungle, we found AIDS, in the lab, COVID. And the anxious, intense modern body politic has picked at the scab of dimwittedness and resentment and uncovered a new version of an ancient depravity: the vigilangione.
Vigilante means "watchman." It is from "vigil" meaning "watchful, awake," and has the same origin as "vigor." It emerged in early American communities that had grown beyond the law and resorted to undeputized law enforcement. "Angione" is from "Mangione," a pretty boy who made up a crime, made up a punishment, convicted a man of that crime in his mind, then murdered him.
Mangione's victim was not even the perpetrator of Mangione's made-up crime; he was just in the moral vicinity. But the scythe of righteousness swings wide. The vigilangione is much like the religious maniac doing God's work, but without a letter of marque. He's a man of the time of "the feud," where Hatfields were held responsible by McCoys for acts, sometimes serious, sometimes merely perceived, sometimes only distantly related, often from barely remembered times.
The vigilangione emerges from a world of uncodified law, where rules are created and enforced by individual whim, not just for personal gratification, but for a perceived greater good. Like at an individual lynching, the man stands by his work.
Or like the modern politician, who must set aside society's abstract legal restraints and rise above the law to set things right.
So it is in a land that has rejected the very laws that allow us to live together.
Cry Havoc.
