Post 9700 - But I Was Just

The story comes down in my wife's family that her father was called Stuart the Just by his mother, because he was forever saying "But I was just..." Well, children say that, and sometimes it is an entirely fair thing to say. It sometimes does signify that you would be entirely justified in your actions if people only knew the full context, which is is being neglected.  More often, it is an evasion, and attempt to repaint something black-and-white into a distracting array of colors.

Up here we now have the wry amusement of listening to people who have been hiding behind something being a "peaceful protest," even when it involves shouting at others and blocking traffic, feeling afraid now because counter-protestors are getting in their way and shouting at them. Sauce. Goose. Gander.

I wrote years ago about the Saint Benedict Center, a Feeneyite splinter group here in NH who always try to reframe the debate in terms of "they only hate us because we are traditional Catholics." Well, the Vatican disagrees that they are Catholics in good standing, for openers. It would be more accurate to say that they are Traditionalists for the years 1850-1950 in Catholic culture east of the Mississippi. Also, your neighbors aren't trying to stop you because you are traditional Catholics, they object to you lying and breaking promises. You were granted a variance for building in your compound in Richmond, NH which was quite specific.  You later decided you would rather build a chapel and did that instead.

We see through it with children: "I was just trying to teach the cat a trick." No, you were teasing the cat. "I was just trying to get home to do my chores."  No, you cut your two last classes of the day. We seem to have a harder time when adults try it, likely because we are more suave about it.  We make it sound better.  Communists used to swear in Latin America that all those people were just agrarian reformers.  When the US sends its military (and we are by no means the only ones who use this dodge) unofficially, we say "Those are just advisors."

It's almost a guarantee that when someone says "I was just..." that they weren't just doing whatever, but have been exposed as having some other, darker motive.