It occurred to me today that things seem to be getting a little out of our control.

A plot was foiled this past week to kidnap the governor of Michigan and to violently overthrow the Michigan government.

Michigan. State in the United States of America. Domestic location. ON AMERICAN SOIL.

Some of my friends, people who may be reading this post, are people who have, over the course of the seven months, expressed negative opinions about the governor of Michigan and the job that the governor is doing in leading the state. They are within their rights to express such opinions, just as people who disagree have rights to express opposing opinions.

But, make no mistake: if you condone violence against others, you are off the path. You have become extremist.

The details surrounding the case of this plot, as I read about them earlier in the week, reminded me of a few different things. I’ll discuss these over a couple of different posts.

* * *

In chemistry, a radical is an atom or a molecule that has an odd number of valence electrons, to my lay understanding.

When I realized that I didn’t know enough about the subject to be able to write intelligently, I went to a high school science teacher in my school district, to ask some questions about the details. What followed was a significant philosophical conversation
–since this fellow and I share some common philosophy– and a little bit of a discussion on electrons.

Apparently, because radicals have this odd number of valence electrons, they are in a search for other entities, molecules or atoms, that also have the same condition, with which to connect and ‘bond’. The bond that is formed allows for the radical to relieve its ‘radical-ness’, by pairing with another entity that has an extra electron, as well.

This search is what causes the radical atoms or molecules to be highly ‘reactive’, in comparison to other atoms or molecules with paired electrons. Their reactivity means that they are involved in many different types of chemical reactions, many of which release energy, in the form of heat and/or light.

Maybe, when you hear the word ‘radical’, your first thought does not necessarily go to chemistry. However, there are a couple of interesting similarities here that are worth noting.

If you’ve ever been around someone, who is a little radical in their thinking or in their opinions, you’ve probably noticed the feelings that you tend to have, being around them. When they say things that seem ‘radical’, maybe you are a little disturbed to hear their thoughts, maybe you wonder whether or not they really believe what they are saying, or if they’re just saying them to get a rise out of others. Maybe you want to make a bee-line for the nearest path away from that particular person.

Radical people cause, in you, a reaction.

It’s also interesting to note that the radicals are searching for other radicals, because it is with the other radicals that they are able to make a bond that will complete their electron deficiency. A radical doesn’t bond with a non-radical, because the non-radical isn’t in the same situation as the radical; the non-radical is not missing the valence electron pair. When radicals find other radicals, the bond is formed because they share in a deficiency. It’s a deficiency that non-radicals don’t have.

I know that there have been times in my life when I have held beliefs that were radical, and in believing as I did, I sought out other people to help me to either 1) confirm that my thoughts were extremist and ought to be discarded, or 2) identify others who felt the same as I did. Being radical and alone is uncomfortable, because we don’t have other people to help us to determine whether our views are legitimate.

Additionally, have you ever noticed that people who tend to be ‘radical’ and ‘reactive’ tend to associate with, tend to pal around, tend to be interested in the company of, other radicals? When these individuals get together, the bond that is formed, from the common deficiency that they share, connects them in an amalgam that is significantly strong. It’s almost as if they find a sense of belonging in their shared deficiency.

Radicals.

* * *

In the days and weeks and months that followed the attacks on September 11th, 2001, our nation –to my recollection– was largely unified. Unified in its resolve to find the people responsible for the attacks, and to bring them to justice, unified in our identity as a nation and the degree to which an attack against any of us was an attack against all of us. I would imagine that it also felt like this, in the United States, after Pearl Harbor, not that I was alive at the time, to be able to say one way or the other.

But, the degree to which attacks that come at us from the outside cause us to rally together, this doesn’t seem to be true of the attacks that come from within.

I’m reminded of those family units, maybe just husbands and wives, or maybe entire groups of parents and their children, who will attack each other with a vengeance. But, woe to anyone who would attack them from the outside; a group of people who seemed to be lacking a target found targets in each other –> an outside attacker could become a common target for the members of the family who’ve just been looking for someone to fight.

I’ve heard it said that much of the twentieth century was so productive for the United States because we shared a common enemy. The common enemy –the Nazis or the Soviets or the North Koreans or the Viet Cong or the Iraqis– which Americans could all agree to be the target of our angst and animosity, allowed for us as a nation to not have to stoop to the level of in-fighting and back-stabbing. We knew who the enemy was, and we warred with that enemy. And not with each other.

As I am writing this, there seems to be no end to the division in our United States.

Abraham Lincoln once said that, and I’m paraphrasing here, we as a nation would be the authors of our own destruction, that we could never be taken apart from the outside. Check me on this, if you’d like; he said it in a speech in 1838 that’s come to be known as the Lyceum Address. It’s a great speech by a great orator, and it is very applicable to where we are at today, as a nation.

By the way, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, the most infamous member of  a group of co-conspirators who put together a plan to kill the President in Ford Theater. Originally, they planned to kidnap Lincoln, but decided to just murder him instead.

Enemies within. Radicals.