That’s how I imagine it happened, too. You probably saw the post and, having read the headline, and the intro all the way to the end, and then made it straight through the article itself in its entirety from beginning to end, knew you had to search your soul for how you really felt about it. Perhaps you sat with it, in your favorite chair, making a two-cigar problem of it. Joseph, your hired man, may’ve had to stoke the fire three times into the night. Could be that you settled on one particular way you may’ve felt about the questions raised, then were haunted by nitpicking doubts now and again, even deep in the middle of other reflections over the course of several days.

Uncertain results not being satisfactory to you, I could imagine you set out with a faithful bloodhound for the kind of long walk that settles a furtive mind. In one’s mind’s eye, I can see you and Scout setting for a spell on a promontory over Lookout Mountain, asking Old Man Sunset his thoughts about the trouble and which way you ought to cast your vote on the snap. At long last, and on a dewy next morning, I can see you rounding the corner coming home, its familiar scene bracing you for the vote you knew, now once and for all, had to be down.

What other choice could it’ve been, really? Having familiarized yourself with every aspect of the problem, you will’ve come from the mountaintop not so much having been convinced, as having a conviction. That’s the thing about historical lessons as general as this checklist. They are either true, or not. Yes, or no. And only once in the wide, wending stream of history. This piece was from 2007. Clearly such a template, meant for comparing to other times and other places and other cultures, only meant something if indeed it meant anything at the exact moment in 2007 that it was written. Here, almost ten years later, it’s stale. Useless. Old. Can tell us nothing, nor inform our views, nor compare with our times, our place, or our society.

Why, if you’d’ve downvoted it before you’d even read the headline all the way through, you’d’ve saved yourself all that torment, and introspection and self-examination.