The Scotts Ferry / Dead Lakes People

In my earlier post about James Richards, I thought about including the fact that Scotts Ferry, which is only about twenty miles from the Richards blockhouse, was founded by an American Indian named Jacob Scott and for many years was largely an Indian settlement.  However, it seems that only a few families had moved to that spot by 1849, which is when James Richards died, so this provides little evidence of him peacefully coexisting with Indians after the massacres.  It might seem a little surprising to have Indians move into the area so soon after a war fought over the Removal Act, but the difference seems to be that the newcomers did not try to maintain their own laws and political independence.

Honestly, this whole dimension of the story of Scotts Ferry came as a complete surprise to me.  My parents were married in the Methodist church at Scotts Ferry, and the churchyard is full of my relatives, including my grandfather and grandmother on my mom's side, but I never heard a whisper about the town being founded by an Indian.  Nor was there anything about this in any of the Florida history classes I took as a schoolboy -- classes that, in retrospect, were remarkably lacking in the sort of local information that might have made them "come alive".

The reason appears to be that none of my elders knew that Scotts Ferry was founded by an Indian.  The Jim Crow laws had tended to isolate the different racial communities from each other, and about the time those laws disappeared, the Indians largely dispersed to other parts of the country.  There was a real risk of this chapter of history being lost.

Fortunately, Christopher Scott Sewell and Steven Pony Hill have collected a good portion of this history into The Indians of North Florida: From Carolina to Florida, the Story of the Survival of a Distinct American Indian Community.  My only complaint is that the book suffers from some of the same problems as certain of the historical books of the Bible; lists of unfamiliar and difficult-to-pronounce names can interrupt the flow and distract the reader from the main point of the story.  It is definitely important to preserve the names, but I wonder if some reorganization of the material might have kept a tighter focus that would leave readers wanting to know all the details.  Perhaps some information should have been moved to an appendix or end notes.  Fortunately, the authors have also put up a web page dealing specifically with the history of Scotts Ferry, and gives a much more succinct picture.

As is so often the case with history, it is not a pretty picture, showing the inexcusable discrimination that was entrenched in laws and attitudes and that had much more serious consequences than determining where one sat on a bus or what water fountain one used.  I've known for a long time that there never really was a golden age and that the New Jerusalem will only descend from Heaven at the end of time, but I can't help still being disappointed to discover again and again that we humans have always been a pretty sorry lot.

James Richards and the Legend of Bloody Bluff

Mosely Flag of Florida (1845) 
 Image from Zscout370 at English Wikipedia, CC-BY-SA-2.5,2.0,1.0 

This post is a little long and somewhat rambling, so let me apologize for that in advance.  I had planned to use a family legend as an example of how retaliation tends to spiral out of control, but it soon became apparent that the tale, though anchored in fact, requires some corrections and clarifications.  My sources are usually incomplete and often contradictory, but taken together they help fill in some holes in the often-repeated story.

My whole life I have heard variations on the following story.

Thomas C. Richards left Ocheesee and moved to a settlement on the Dead Lakes called Wewahichka. Thomas C. Richards and his sons built a log fort on the river bank for protection against unfriendly Indians. The fort was built with port holes and the families lived inside. On the night of Jan. 14, 1838 a band of hostile Indians came up the river by canoe, made a surprise attack on the fort and the battle lasted all night. Thomas C. Richards was killed in the attack. ... James Richards lost most of his family in a Creek Indian massacre. Under the threat of removal to lands in Arkansas, the Indians staged several uprisings. ... They killed Mrs. Richards and her three small sons in their log house. Harriett and Jehu, who were playing outside, went undetected by the Indians. They managed to steal into the deep swamp known today as Hunter's Head. When Richards returned home that night he found his home in ashes. In the midst of the smoldering rubble, he discovered the remains of his wife, who had been scalped, and his three children. Richards searched the woods for the other two but found only feathers fluttering in the breeze from the bed pillows that had once been inside the house. The next day Richards and his neighbors combed the swamp with their dogs. They found both children safe -- Jehu at a place known today as Jehu's Landing and little Harriett in another section of the alligator infested swamp. According to legend, Richards swore vengeance against all Indians after the massacre. He became a "madman" and spent his time "Indian hunting." In retaliation for what had been done to his family, Richards, along with several others, slew a band of Indians camped on a bluff on the Chipola River. Although lost today, the site was known for many years as "Bloody Bluff," because of the blood that ran down into the river after the attach.

Another version adds a few additional details.

In 1830, the federal government passed the Removal Act, which forced most of the Indians to move west to Arkansas and Indian territory. Rather than be relocated, some Indian bands went on an uprising, striking families when the men were gone. 

They massacred the wife and three small children of James (Jim) Richards and torched his home while he was away hunting with the other men. The older children, Jehu and Harriett, a young girl staying with the family, escaped in the deep swamp known as Hunter’s Head. But the date of the massacre is uncertain, with some saying it took place in 1838 and others believing it occurred earlier than that. 

To protect the Richards and other families attempting to survive on the frontier, John C. Richards and his sons built a two-story wooden fort so people could go there for protection. 

This structure of typical blockhouse design, measured 16 by 32 feet. It was built from heavy hewn logs, 10 inches square, and pegged together with oak pins. The second floor extended over the first. It was made with an opening in one side through which a ladder could be lowered and raised. Portholes were built into the walls of both stories for light and firing weapons. Many people sought protection at the fort, but Richards died in an attack on Jan. 14, 1838.

Yet another account of the same story contains the interesting "fact" that

Thomas Cupples Richards and his family were among the first group of white settlers along the river. Richards, who was born in France in 1770, came to America with his wife, Elizabeth Hogg, to escape religious persecution. 

I wish I knew the origin of that part of the story, which again I heard growing up and have spent most of my life repeating, but it has serious problems.

• It is well documented that Thomas Cupples Richards was the son of George Richards of North Carolina.  
• "Thomas" and "Stephen" could be either English or French names, but "Cupples" is an Anglo-Saxon name.
• What kind of religious persecution was he supposed to have fled?  The persecution of the Huguenots had happened a century before he is supposed to have fled France, so if he was French and religious, he would have been Catholic.  The Catholic Church was indeed persecuted during the Terror of the French Revolution.  However, when we see the Richards family appear in Florida, they are Methodists.

At any rate, a few questions should arise from the "classic" version of this legend.

• Why exactly did Thomas C. Richards move down to Wewahitchka?
• Was the attack on the Richards homestead random, or was it targeted?
• Why was James Richards away from home the night of the attack?
• Who are the "others" who helped him "[slay] a band of Indians camped on a bluff on the Chipola River"?
• If James Richards went crazy and started murdering Indians at every opportunity, how is it that he was not made to pay for his actions, either by the government or by the Indians?

A consideration of the context and timing of the events makes it possible to give plausible answers to these questions.

The Richards family started off with good relations with the Indians of Florida.  Perhaps the best summary comes from Calhoun County's The County Record:

Stephen Richards was appointed as interpreter for Chief John Blount and four other Indian chiefs who had acted as guides in Andrew Jackson's invasion of Spanish Florida in 1819. One of Stephen's first assignments was to accompany Chief John Blount to visit the President of the United States, President James Monroe. In his assignment as Indian Interpreter, he met with the Florida Indian Chiefs and the U.S. Commissioners at the Treaty of Fort Moultrie Creek. This treaty set up reservations for the Seminole nation and in particular, the five Indian Chiefs in the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee Valley. 

Stephen Richards proved many times his friendship for the five Indian Chiefs. Before the treaty of 1823, he visited Pensacola to discuss Indian affairs with Governor Andrew Jackson. Jackson, in a letter to Washington, D.C., gave an account of this trip to the Secretary of War, describing Richards and John Blount as good friends to him and to the United States. One part of the treaty that the United States government failed to validate was the grant to Stephen Richards of one square mile of land on the Ocheesee Bluff.

Stephen (1796-1871) first came to Florida in 1818, and his older brother Thomas C. Richards (1774-1838) followed in 1821.  Both men were veterans of the War of 1812. As such, they were each entitled to a claim of land in the new territory.

Unlike Stephen, Thomas seems not to have been much engaged with public life.  One might reasonably guess that he intended to grab up fertile land while the getting was good and exploit the long growing season to found a plantation larger than what his father, George Richards, had owned in North Carolina.  Ocheesee Bluff, where both Stephen and Thomas settled (and which essentially coincides with the site of Torreya State Park, where the Richards family reunion was held until the mid 1980's) was well-positioned for this, with the Apalachicola River providing access north into Georgia and south to the Gulf of Mexico.  However, a large plantation would have required slaves, and as far as I can tell, Thomas never had any during the time he was in Florida.  Possibly he made his living off land speculation, a well-established practice in new territories that in many ways still persists near the Florida beaches.

The 1790 census shows Thomas Richards of Beaufort, NC, as the head of a household that included one slave.  More significantly, the will of George Richards directed Thomas Richards to receive one third of his estate (after withholding Hicksey and a few items), which certainly could be expected to include slaves, but the Thomas Richards of Early, GA in the 1820 census, who is perhaps Thomas C. Richards, lived in a household of ten people in which there were no slaves and only one person was engaged in agriculture.  By the 1830 census, Thomas C. Cupples was living in a household of five, none of whom were slaves, and none of whom were listed as "engaged in agriculture", though they unquestionably had at least a small garden, as many people in the Florida Panhandle still do today.  The fact that he was able to move down to Wewahitchka a few years later also shows he was not tied down by a large plantation.

The territorial years of Florida saw significant changes that impact this story.  Aside from the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the most important one was the founding and growth of the city of St. Joseph, which was founded in 1835.  St. Joseph grew rapidly, its population of 6,000 making it for a few years the largest city in the territory of Florida and earning it the privilege of hosting the first constitutional convention to discuss Florida statehood, which was held in late 1838.  Sadly, St. Joseph would soon be destroyed by two disasters in rapid succession --  yellow fever in 1841 and "The Great Tide", probably a hurricane, in 1843 -- but at the time of the massacre, St. Joseph was near its peak.  One of the great benefits it brought was Florida's first steam-powered railway, which in 1836 connected St. Joseph with Lake Wimico, which flows into the Apalachicola River.  By 1839 it would connect to Iola, just east of Wewahitchka.

The attraction of the site at Wewahitchka to Thomas C. Richards thus becomes clear.  It was near the confluence of the Apalachicola and Chipola rivers, and it would soon be connected by railroad to the most populous city in the territory, a city that was showing signs of being politically important.  This would be an excellent spot for a plantation -- or to buy land that might be sold to a planter later.  Being so close to a "large city", the site might even provide better protection from Indian raids than the comparatively remote Ocheesee Bluff.

There was, after all, trouble brewing with the Indians; the threat of removal had triggered the Second Seminole War.  Not all the Indians were hostile to white settlers, though, and who better to recognize and organize these friendly Indians than Stephen Richards?  Accordingly, he organized Richards' Company of Friendly Indians as a part of the Mounted Florida Militia in 1837.  Among the names on the muster are Stephen Richards, captain; John G. Richards, first lieutenant; John Richards, first sergeant; James Richards, Sr., and James Richards, Jr.  

It is impossible to be sure, but the James Richards referred to in the massacre story is mostly likely James Richards, Sr., who was probably the son of Thomas C. Richards.  Unfortunately, the records are incomplete and contradictory, and James was a popular name in the Richards family.  Thomas C. and Stephen Richards had a brother named James who had been an army captain in the American Revolution, but he lost a hand in a duel and died not long afterwards; since no James is mentioned in the will of George Richards, the James of the massacre story must not have been a third brother.  The James of the massacre story had to be old enough to have at least three children, which makes it very unlikely that he was the James Richards born to Stephen Richards in 1820.  Thomas C. Richards was 24 years older than Stephen, though, so he could well have had a grandson old enough to fight.

A similar problem comes with the identity of Jehu Richards.  A son named Jehu was born to Thomas C. Richards around 1799, but he could not have been described as a child in 1838!  However, some sources indicate that Stephen Richards had a son Jehu in 1830, which would have made him 7 or 8 years old at the time of the massacre. 

So let me tie this all together in a way that is somewhat speculative, but much more plausible than the incomplete version of the story normally told.  

Knowing that major trouble was brewing with many of the Indians, Stephen and Thomas C. Richards concentrated their families in a fortified blockhouse.  They sited the house at a location which made strategic sense from both military and economic perspectives.   Stephen Richards also organized friendly natives into a fighting force.  However, he was such a known figure among the Indians that this action could not fail to be noticed.  As a result, the blockhouse holding his family -- and very likely acting as a sometimes base of operations for his Company -- was specifically targeted.

When James "was away hunting with the other men", he was not hunting for meat, he was hunting for hostiles, along with his brother John George Richards and his uncle Stephen Richards.  No doubt he was wild with grief and anger at the fate of his family, but the statement that he "went crazy" and "became an Indian hunter" might mean no more than that he tracked and fought the hostile Indians with amplified intensity and savagery.  He certainly did not attack the men under the command of Stephen Richards.  In fact, these mounted, armed, friendly Indians were probably who made it possible for the Richards family to exact retribution on those who had slaughtered their families.  Furthermore, because his actions took place in the context of war, there was no stigma on the killing and there were no legal consequences for James Richards.

Today there is a campsite maintained by the State of Florida at a place called "Bloody Bluff" only about 5 miles from the site of the Richards' blockhouse.  The official explanation, however, links the name to unrelated skirmishes fought back in 1816.  Possibly both the 1816 skirmishes and the 1838 retaliation happened near the same spot, and the place name fits either event.  There is also a "Bloody Bluff" near the original homestead at Ocheesee Bluff, but that is too far away for it to be a likely part of this story.

Yes, There Is Such a Thing as a Stupid Question.

Teachers like to tell kids that there is no such thing as a stupid question.  If understood as an exaggeration, that's fine:  it makes a point which is particularly important for schoolchildren.  That, however, is no excuse for adults to mindlessly repeat it as though it were a fundamental truth with no exceptions.

For the sake of clarity, let's call the person asking the question Quincy and the person who hears it (whether or not it is addressed to her) Heather.

A question might be stupid because it reveals too much about what Quincy knows or does not know.  For example, if Heather is trying to sell something to Quincy, it might not be in his interest to let her know he does not understand all the details about what he is buying; she might try to persuade him to buy features he does not really need or charge him more than the fair market price.

Alternatively, a question can make an unfair insinuation.  These are particularly obnoxious, because they allow Quincy to cause all the harm of a direct accusation while still providing him cover under the excuse, "I was just asking a question!"  A friend of mine has suffered a good deal recently due to just such a hateful question -- in this case, a very intrusive, personal question from someone who was no more than a casual acquaintance, and who has used it to spread hurtful gossip across the dog park my friend has been using.

A question can also be stupid if it predictably and unnecessarily brings up painful memories for Heather.
 This has also been brought home to me by recent events.  A few days ago I discovered that a friend I had known many years ago, but with whom I had not been in regular contact, has passed away.  The last time I communicated with this friend, she made a comment that was shockingly out of character.  The comment did not in any way involve me, but the friend would have undoubtedly known that it would disturb me.  In fact, I did not believe the comment could be taken at face value; I suspected it to have been an indirect message to get lost.  Not knowing how else to respond, that is what I did.  So now, if I am troubled by uncertainty about what exactly was going on near the end of this friend's life, I must live with that uncertainty.  The opportunity to ask my friend is gone, and it would be massively inappropriate to ask for clarification from anyone who was closer to her in her last days -- both because it would bring up painful memories of her loss, and because it might appear I was trying to besmirch her memory.

An old standard piece of spiritual advice is to speak only when necessary.   For most people under most circumstances, I don't think that needs to be interpreted very rigorously, but I do think it makes an important point.  After all, we are told that we must give an account for "every careless word".  Some of those careless words are formed into questions that really are stupid.

Regarding Immigration

As the election season progresses beyond any hope of being salvaged, it is probably appropriate that I explain my thinking regarding immigration.  This is one of the issues for which no party has a satisfactory policy.

To start with, let me say that immigration policy is entirely unlike abortion policy.  If the fetus is in fact a human person (which it is), then it is wrong to murder that person, with no exceptions, and it is matter of public interest.  If the fetus were not a human person, abortion would be as much a personal decision as a haircut, and it would be the business of no one but the woman seeking the abortion.  The in-between positions are just nonsense.  These include the assertion that only women should have a say about abortion -- all women, not just the woman seeking the abortion.  That doesn't work: it's either everyone's business, or no one's business; either it's public, or it's private.  Likewise with the "politically moderate" exceptions to abortion of rape and incest.  They make no more sense than it would to criminalize the abuse of five year olds, except for those children who were conceived through rape or incest.  Most things in politics are not all-or-nothing in the way abortion is, and immigration policy certainly is not.

Immigration policy is more like economic policy.  In economics the two extremes might be taken to be a planned economy under the total control of a central authority, as in Communism, and a complete Laissez Faire Capitalism, governed only by supply and demand.  We know from history that both are prone to enormous abuses, and that neither really works.  Economies under central control lack the creativity and flexibility needed to thrive, and unimpeded Capitalism is unstable, subject to both cycles of booms and busts and to monopolization.  As a result, even the most enthusiastic supporters of Capitalism now generally accept the necessity of bankruptcy protection and federally insured deposits, and usually prohibitions on price gouging, dumping, and insider trading; as for Communism, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the adoption by China of more-or-less free markets, it is hard to find anyone except North Korea seriously advocating that system.  There is practical unanimity that the best system must lie between the two extremes, although plenty of squabbling remains about exactly which compromise solution is best.  And, of course, the compromise that works best for Texas might not work best for Sweden.

On one extreme of the immigration debate are those who seem to think that each country has an obligation not only to let in anyone who wishes to come, but also to assist them in their travels, ensure them food, clothing, shelter, medical assistance, and a job as soon as they arrive, give them full citizenship, and expect absolutely no conformity to the culture of their new country.  Although this position seems to be popular with many clerics, it is still obviously hogwash, since it would mean that no nation could defend itself from being washed out of existence by an invading horde -- and the diversity of cultures we get from having separate and distinct nations is a good that should not be casually and carelessly discarded.  It should also be pointed out that it is naive to assume that the people who make use of the generosity of others will necessarily show generosity in turn -- particularly if they have not been asked to accept the culture of their new homeland.

On the other extreme are those who are willing to give the government absolutely anything it needs or says it needs to prevent illegal immigration and to deport illegal aliens who are already here.  Absolutely.  Anything.  That's the sort of talk that makes any would-be dictator's mouth water, because to get rid of 11 million illegal immigrants we would need to become a full-fledged police state.  That is far too high a price to pay for the 96.6% of American residents who are not illegal aliens, let alone the 3.4% who are.

Just because the best solution must lie between the extremes does not mean that every solution between the extremes is good.  In fact, our current system is between the two extremes, and it is perhaps the worst possible solution.  We make it only moderately difficult for people to cross the border illegally -- just hard enough that they are invested in being here when they arrive, having either endured hardship or paid what to them is a substantial sum of money, or both.  Once here, as long as they do not draw attention to themselves, they might be able to stay for decades, meaning of course that they put down roots.  If they attract the attention of law enforcement, though, they are subject to deportation.  Deportation may not sound like such a bad thing if your picture is of being deported from a holiday destination after violating a local taboo while on vacation, but think instead of the deportation from Anatevka at the end of "Fiddler on the Roof".  For those who have made substantial investments or put down roots, it is a real punishment indeed.

What this set of circumstances means is that illegal immigration is not seriously impeded, providing a steady supply of low-income workers to industries that choose to pay wages that do not attract American workers.  Even "better", because illegal aliens do not want to attract the attention of law enforcement, they are not likely to report unsafe working conditions, missing pay, or other abuses, allowing their employers to cut even more corners.  There is no way I believe all this is a coincidence.

My preferred alternative would be the polar opposite of what currently exists.  We should make it very difficult for anyone to enter the country illegally, but we should be much more lenient on those who have already come and put down roots without engaging in violent crime.  If someone does meet the criteria for having "put down roots" -- perhaps by having been in the U.S.A. for 10 years without being charged for a violent crime -- he should have the option of renouncing his foreign citizenship and becoming a permanent U.S. national.  As a national, rather than a citizen, he would be ineligible to vote or hold elected office, and unlike those born in American Samoa, he could never apply for citizenship, but otherwise he would have all the same rights as a U.S. citizen.  Or perhaps he could also be banned from holding any government job other than serving in the military, although I would probably allow that to be upgraded to full citizenship if he serves 6 years in the U.S. military.

We have the right, even the duty, to control our borders, but we need to do so in a way that avoids doing more harm than good.

Three New Planks for the Republican Platform

1. Crush your enemies.
2. See them driven before you.
3. Hear the lamentations of their women.

This is what happens when they put Arnold Schwarzenegger on the platform committee. 

Passing of the Last Generation of Holocaust Survivors

The recent news of the death of Elie Wiesel reminded me of Mike Jacobs.  Mr. Jacobs, who founded the Dallas Holocaust Museum, spoke at the university where I taught about a dozen years ago; sadly, he passed away almost two years ago.  I am ashamed to say I have only skimmed his book, Holocaust Survivor: Mike Jacobs' Triumph over Tragedy, but the title very much conveys the tone of the talk he gave.

In fact, the title is too much of an understatement.  "Triumph over tragedy" can mean many things, including revenge, but in the case of Mike Jacobs, it meant something much more rare:  triumph over bitterness.  Given what he saw, what he experienced, and what he lost, I do not think it would be possible to forgo bitterness without cooperating with divine grace to the extent of heroic virtue.  If an Armenian monk not visibly in union with Rome could be declared both a Saint and Doctor of the Church, perhaps Mike Jacobs is now a Saint, though one who will never be canonized.

It will probably be another ten, fifteen, or even twenty years until the last of the death camp survivors passes away, but we are clearly at a point where their numbers will be falling rapidly.  When we lose them, we will lose a sense of the reality of the horrors they endured.  If you want to know what I mean, compare how we think about World War I with the effect it had on the course of history over the past hundred years.  It brought about the end of many of the traditional structures of Europe that made Europe the center of Christendom, including the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the fall of the Tsar; it set up the conditions for both Nazism and Communism; it made nations reluctant to intervene against Nazism before it was too late; and it triggered a boom in decadence and occultism that would be more obvious were we not experiencing an even bigger boom right now.  How do we think about it, though?  Merely as a quaint prelude to World War II and "the Greatest Generation".  We think of Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.  We have photos, documents, and artifacts that testify to the horrors of World War I, but without human witnesses, it necessarily feels somewhat imaginary.  That will soon be happening to the Holocaust, and the world will truly have lost something when it happens.

When I see articles written in response to the death of Elie Wiesel saying "now it is up to us to remember", though, one of the first things that comes to my mind is that too few people understand what the point is, what is the thing that we really need to remember.  Many people think what we should remember is, to quote Donald Duck, "Oh, boy!  Am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America!" ... where such things presumably cannot happen.  Gratitude and patriotism are good things, but they are NOT the lesson the Holocaust teaches, and a naive American exceptionalism is in fact close to the polar opposite of what it teaches.  Many others see the lesson as being that if we are not vigilant, others may do terrible things like this to us.  I will concede that at least this is one of the lessons of the Holocaust, but not one of the more shocking or important ones.  There are two of those.

To understand the first lesson, consider that although some people can obviously run faster or jump higher than others, human physiology limits how fast anyone can run and how high anyone can jump.  We may not know exactly where these limits are, but the current world records are probably pretty close to the maxima, and we would expect, say, the average speed of all adults in any given city in the 100-m dash to fall within the range of speeds for people we know.  

It is natural to expect an analogous situation to apply to evildoing.  We know that people can do some pretty terrible things, but surely human nature must provide a limit to how evil a person can be, and we have a pretty good feeling for where that is, right?  Well, even if such a limit does exist, it did not prevent Mengele from performing abominable experiments on children that he met and knew -- demonstrating a magnitude of evil that is entirely beyond my comprehension.  Well, what about nations?  Surely in any large nation the good people and the bad people must average out to pretty much the same value everywhere, right?  Again, the answer is no.

So the first lesson is that we have much more freedom to choose good or evil, both as individuals and as nations, than we might have reasonably expected.  We cannot trust to human nature to keep things from becoming too bad; we must instead actively and consciously restrain ourselves.  

The second lesson is closely related to the first.  It is not just that if we are not careful, we might suffer horrible deaths.  Whether we are talking about leprosy or Ebola or any of dozens of other horrific diseases, that possibility has been known for ages.  No, the lesson is that if we are not careful, we run the real risk of becoming more evil than we can fully comprehend.  It can happen here, unless we prevent it.  It has already happened in a "civilized" nation with a culture nearly identical to ours.


It would be wrong to close on a note that is so grim it might sound hopeless, so let me instead leave you with a quote from Jesus in John 16:33b:

In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world.

EDIT:  It occurred to me after submission that there is another lesson, this one slightly more reassuring:  There is a suicidal component to evil.  This can be seen time and time again, but Nazi Germany is perhaps the most outstanding example.  If the Reich had stopped at being nasty and discriminatory, it would not have become the most prominent symbol for evil in the modern world.  If the Reich had been content with annexing Austria and the Sudetenland, it would probably still be around today, and it might have survived if it had merely held onto half of France and half of Poland without also attacking the U.S.S.R., but of course it did.  Germany even declared war on the U.S.A. when America might well have been content to confine our war to Japan after Pearl Harbor!  And of course the theory of Aryan supremacy was most thoroughly disproved by the very test the Nazis chose to put it to:  world war.  Evil sews the seeds of its own destruction.

A Naive, Passive, Navy Seal?

The first death of a "driver" in a self-driving car on public roads has just been reported.  That was an eventual inevitability, so in that sense not much of a surprise.  What is a surprise, though, is that the "driver", Joshua D. Brown, had spent 11 years as a Navy Seal.  I've known a couple of Navy Seals, and I can think of ways they might die after retirement:  in a skydiving accident, or a cave diving accident, or a climbing accident, or a motorcycle accident.  A Seal might have a parachute fail to open properly, but you can dang well be sure he would have packed it himself.  He might have a line break while climbing, but it would be one that he had chosen and inspected first.  In other words, I would expect that if he dies early, it will be because he is doing something active and placed too much trust in himself; otherwise he is likely to die of a more humdrum cause, like too many cigarettes.  He would know from experience not to put too much trust in technology, because he would have seen technology fail and would have been trained to adapt when that happens.

So when I read that a veteran Navy Seal has died due to placing too much faith in a self-driving car, and that (according to the truck driver's account) he had felt that a Harry Potter movie was a better use of his time and concentration than driving ... something just does not add up.  No, I'm not claiming foul play and a cover-up; I'm just saying it does not add up.