Remember a couple of weeks ago I wrote a frustrated post about warrantless wiretapping (or cell phone listening, whatever) and how so many people say "I've got nothing to hide, so who cares?" and I identified part of the problem as the "magical thinking" of "bad things don't happen to good people?"
"Bad things don't happen to good people" is a comforting thought for a number of reasons.
… [T]hinking this way is a temptation to many people. It is also called "magical thinking," because it causes so many good people to believe that they, somehow, can prevent bad things from happening to them by behaving the "right" way, where the "right" way is equivalent to "what good people do."
Go find any news story about a person who has suffered a terrible accident or crime. Dive down into the comments. Someone, somewhere, is convinced that the sufferer suffers (or lost his life), fundamentally because he did something wrong….
Found a bitterly amusing example of this today.
Indiana Woman Shoots and Kills Leopard Prowling in Her Backyard
Last Thursday, a woman in Charlestown, Indiana and her boyfriend stayed up all night, armed with a rifle, to hunt down whatever it was that had been attacking small animals in her neighborhood. After spotting and shooting a creature prowling in the shadows by the woman's pool, they were shocked to find that they'd just killed a leopard, an animal that's not native to North America, much less Indiana.
The woman, who didn't want to be identified, mentioned the story to her friend and neighbor Donna Duke, who then told ABC affiliate WDRB about the strange kill. Officials at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources confirmed that a leopard had been found on the woman's property. Duke said the woman was worried about a recent streak of attacks against cats and dogs in the neighborhood….
"She's got cats that are basically her family," Duke said. "She was trying to protect her babies.”
…Bloom [of the Department of Natural Resources] believes the leopard must have been someone's pet, though authorities have no idea whose. The owner of a nearby wild life refuge denied that the leopard was his. So, people living in Indiana, if you're missing your pet leopard and reading this, we have bad news.
The first comment on this story?
She could've also avoided her cats being eaten by a leopard if she'd kept them inside.
That's right, folks. Bad things — like discovering your suburban-Indiana kitty eaten by an Afro-Asian wild cat that escaped from someone's private zoo, or whatever — don't happen to good people who keep their cats inside. Let that be a lesson to you.
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