Death is Not the Way: Life in the Valley of Tears

This article first appeared on my Substack, "Remembering Tomorrow." It references an article from Catholic365 which I posted almost 2 years ago, now, and republish from time to time. Oh how time flies, and oh how things never seem to change! Enjoy.

When I searched through some old articles to feature a couple weeks back as I was getting caught up on family stuff, I did not expect the article chosen to foreshadow a very similar article so soon. And yet, here we are: another year, another very public execution of an innocent life in the sake of protecting that life from, well, life.

The article I am referring to, for those of you who don’t know, was my old article on the Assassination of P’Nut (https://www.catholic365.com/article/43900/the-assassination-of-pnut-am-i-next.html). I wrote that article back in the year 2024 when, if you are familiar with the incident in question, some New York Karens called the cops on an individual who ran a rescue for injured animals from his home. Among these animals was a (supposedly) beloved internet squirrel named P’Nut, as well as a raccoon (name I can’t remember). When the police arrived, they treated his home like he was harboring a criminal. They raided his home, sought out the animals, and euthanized both raccoon and P’Nut. So, what was initiated as a mercy rescue to save these animals from being well fed and sheltered (they belong in the wild!!!) turned into a mercy killing operation.

The philosophy that sees literal death as the more merciful option rather than any sort of real or perceived irregularity of life was on full display that fateful day in 2024. At the time, and again a few weeks ago, I could not help but point out the similarities between P’Nut’s death and the death of so many killed in abortion. I wrote:

 
"Abortion, and killing P’Nut now apparently, are the two actions wherein otherwise caring individuals claim that precisely because they care, they have to kill the object of their concern.  Kill the child: I don’t want it to be hungry.  Kill the child: the world is messed up, and the child will have to live in it.  Kill the child: the system is messed up, and it’s tangentially hurting the mother’s body anyhow.  Kill P’Nut: it must be horrible that he’s been cared for and lived inside, and besides, his little mouth bit the Officer.  

…I for one am not dying inside because a squirrel who had a hat similar to mine got killed today.  But the similarity in thought process between killing P’Nut and otherwise kind souls who advocate for killing the unborn was too similar to not comment on.  It makes me wonder, just a little bit, when someone will decide that I am suffering too much and it would be better that I was killed than continue to be unknowingly miserable.  I can only hope that those sent to kill me tell me how not happy I actually am, how miserable my life really is before the deed; at least I will not die in ignorance."

How I wish my article from a few weeks ago was only a mere rerun! Alas! I had no idea we would be revisiting this again so soon. For another public mercy killing has been committed - this time by “loving” parents, deciding to kill their child because, as the Babylonian Bee so aptly put it, “their child would be among the happiest demographic on earth.”

The mercy killing of 2026 starts with a similarity: there is an apparently popular Internet person, and something has happened. I personally have never heard of Jesse Ridgeway, just as I had never heard of P’Nut. So, as it happens, I suppose getting killed or killing someone is a good way of becoming more widely known. Good to know. But whereas P’Nut was the internet victim, Jesse takes on the role of merciful executioner. 

Jesse and his wife decided to abort their child after a “likely” diagnosis of Down Syndrome last week. Typically no one else would ever have known this decision, but Jesse is a YouTuber; apparently followers have the expectation of knowing every intimate detail of their leader’s lives. So Jesse and his wife publicly revealed their child was “likely” to be born with Down Syndrome. Then the deliberations began.

See, Jesse initially was excited to be a father. And, in an interview defending his decision, said his original plan was to roll with the punches; he was going to be a father, no matter the struggles. “I was shocked but optimistic,” he said. “If they’re a little slow intellectually, then we’ll make it work. I signed on to be a parent, come what may.” Right on, Jesse: these are the correct feelings of mercy, love, and normalcy.

Alas! It was not to last. He started looking into Down Syndrome, and found that life wasn’t all rainbows and roses. When he saw the struggles of life with a special needs child, Jesse and his wife decided to be “merciful;” to kill the child. “I didn’t realize how rough it is for the child, let alone the family… more often than not, they would be fully dependent on others for the rest of their life,” Jesse said when he began to defend the abortion. The couple, in this light, saw themselves as the merciful, long suffering parents of the child, and mourned the “loss” of their child like any other parent would have. In a crazy turn of events, the executioners have painted themselves as the victims of this incident. But, perhaps it isn’t so crazy a turn as it might seem.

Inevitably, there are tells to this farcical modern philosophy of mercy. You hear it in the language. We hear about how hard it will be for the subject - that is, the victim - in terms of hardship, irregularity, pain, etc. The question is literally begged that all that justifies death rather than life under the circumstances; we who are outside the situation with care of the afflicted would then have the moral obligation to contemplate a mercy killing. But then come the real motivators: how hard it is for the family, the child will be dependent on others, etc. Or, even more explicitly, the real egocentric motivator is heard in this line from Jesse’s social media defense: “More than likely, I would have to bury my son. That is not what I wanted to sign up for.” Turns out, it was a mercy killing after all, then: mercifully sparing the parents from inconvenience, unconditional love, and the pains of irregularity.

For a world that prides itself on the subjective experience, elevating autonomy of the individual to be the highest social virtue, we are in a curious place of eliminating subjects at a whim - so long as they cannot scream in protest. When the chips are down, this society isn’t as altruistic as it pretends. At its core, we are a scared world: preaching kindness, autonomy, and virtue only so that we might hopefully convince others not to mercy kill us when we become too inconvenient for them. But given the chance, this crazy world will literally kill its own children to save itself. What does it save itself from? The very thing is pretends it “saves” children from by killing them: irregularity. If this isn’t the most blatant affront to the human person - humans, who are definitionally irregular in their uniqueness and subjectivity - I do not know what is. A world which seeks to free humanity from its humanity is a fallen world indeed.

If you enjoyed this, be sure to check out my Substack at https://rememberingtomorrow.substack.com. In addition, be sure to check out my new book: Remembering Freedom. It is a book for the modern defender of truth. Designed to be both engaging and practical, this book articulates abstract concepts while providing real-life stories from married life, military deployments, and more to illustrate how “abstract” things look in the real world. If you are looking to enter into discussions, or if you find yourself wondering how on earth we got to the point we are at now, Remembering Freedom is the book for you.