The Faces Of Evil

     From The True Believer by Eric Hoffer:

     "Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. 

     " ... When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: 'No ... we should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.'  F.A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement.  Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: 'It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can't, because we haven't got any Jews.'

     " ... Finally, it seems, the ideal devil is a foreigner. To qualify as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given foreign ancestry. Hitler found it easy to brand the German Jews as foreigners. The Russian revolutionary agitators emphasized the foreign origin ... of the Russian aristocracy. ..."

     The parallels and implications for contemporary American polity are clear -- though often neglected in the gales of commentary from and about Washington. Punditry is preoccupied with handicapping Republicans' decision to cling to Donald Trump. Is it shrewd or foolish? Will cohesion in the Trump base be a decisive asset? Will disaffected moderates counter loyal Trumpsters? Will priorities of the larger public defeat a narrowly partisan strategy?

     These arid calculations are suitable for  appraising  the vested interests of the Republican Party.  Certainly they suit the Republican leaders who have for years placed party above country. But as they venture now to place party above common decency, the nation comes to a larger reckoning.

     The plain truth is that the moral depravity of the Trump administration was calculated. That administration was the government. Our government. And the question now placed before us by the behavior of senior Republicans is this:   What  responsibility will we accept  -- and what accountability demand -- for a government that demonized minorities,  opened concentration camps for children and, in an onslaught of disease, countenanced extra deaths by the  thousands to further a  self-serving pose?

     Republican leaders are deservedly faulted for being hyper-partisan, but their true common denominator is a venal craving for power. They wink at bigotry, cruelty, deceit, violence, incompetence and breathtaking corruption. Why? Well, they say, to regain dominance for their party's principles of governance.  Allusion to principle is made straight-faced. This is a classic case of idealizing ends to justify vile means.

     And among the complicit are none other than religious leaders. This is a ghastly, wretched thing. The lure of political influence has adulterated values on the Christian right, where citation of scripture can now be highly selective. Thus we need not expect references to the fourth chapter of the gospel of Matthew. There, in his final wilderness attempt to subvert Jesus, Satan tries to induce Him to covet secular power.  

     Protected by two oceans and national affluence, Americans have been spared some of the harder realities of life elsewhere. This colors our reading of history. It conditions our perspective on those junctures when governing authority in another country has been infected with what can only be called evil.

     We are tempted to think: It can't happen here.  But it can. And it has. And high officials are now conniving to carry it forward.

     Though some Republican figures have begun to display a functioning gag reflex, party leadership remains dominated by those who choose to ignore the difference between public attitude and the mood of a mob. In the face of cynically energized bigotry and deceit, they have chosen to lead from behind. They have turned the Congress of the United States into a place where principles perish. They have countenanced rhetoric whose consequence could be predicted by any sentient person above the age of 10:  Individuals may now be attacked in the public streets because of their ethnicity.

     As Washington accepts lower and lower standards for business as usual, the rest of us should remain alert to the fact that evil may wear an everyday face.

     

     

School? Why?

 

     My job once made me the luncheon guest of an internationally known cleric and scholar of classical literature. He was charming in conversation, gracious in hospitality, gentle in demeanor. Also, he displayed a precision of mind that I had previously associated with technical or scientific education.

     I confessed my surprise, and he explained. His vocation required his being able to discern nuances of meaning in language, and to preserve them as he translated  from a first language forward  through two or three more.  Precision of thought was essential. Achieving it had required of him as a student arduous work and mental discipline. 

     At this point  -- even though we were in the dining hall of a monastery -- he raised his voice and pounded the table so hard the silverware jumped. "This modern idea that learning can be fun is hooey!  The only way to learn is to break your ass!"

     He is many years gone, but I think he might agree that related questions for today are: Learn what? And, Why?

     Lawmakers in my state undertook to answer aggressively. Election cycles had installed people who viewed themselves as new brooms. They shuffled governance and administration of the state university system. They called for greater "efficiency" in the university's operation. They declared disdain for "frills." They declaimed on equipping students to find jobs.

     Their precept?  The value of education is measured in its near-term economic utility.

     We can be glad this view was not shared by the progenitors of western civilization. We should regret that it is not peculiar to my state or wholly focused on college.  It represents an elemental departure from any fully formed concept of education.

     Dorothy Sayers, the mystery writer who was also an accomplished  classical scholar, said as early as the 1940's that foundational concepts of schooling had already been compromised. I would paraphrase her argument this way:

     The first function of education is to teach people to think, and to communicate accurately. As words are our means of delineating ideas, precision in one requires precision in the other. Or, in the obverse: Muddy thinking and muddy language both shape and reflect each other.

     Students are not drilled in the logic that properly links words to words and creates sentences with exact meaning. They are not experienced in dialectic argument as an exercise -- word used advisedly -- in reasoning. They are permitted to consume facts without synthesis and to recite them without understanding.

     The result? People no longer fully understand how to read or to express themselves.  They are hobbled in thinking and communication.

     Anecdotal evidence can be pertinent, and mine has the virtue of being consistent over many years. In a career of supervising writers, I encountered with dismal regularity some who could not reliably distinguish an expression of opinion from a statement of fact. 

     Despite their  having reputable educations. 

     Even when they had written the sentences themselves.

     They did not fully understand how to take accurate meaning from an English sentence. 

    When  schooling shapes people to know more than they understand, what consequences ensue? (Not least in some quarters of academe, where cataloging may pass for scholarship.)

     We have leaders who can't muster language of leadership. Ideas religious, moral, ethical and political are presented in the form of slogans. Discourse is shallow -- and here consequences may be especially severe. One inescapable implication of America's distemper in recent years is that many people don't recognize propaganda when they hear it.

     My state has a history of endemic rural poverty. The farmers and laborers who were willing to pay taxes for our university wanted their children to be freed from a future behind the plow. Yes. But not merely by getting better jobs. 

     They wanted their children equipped to be full-strength participants in an emerging society; to discern a variety of life choices and to make them well; to contribute to  shaping  the climate of attitude and opportunity in which their own children would live.

    Of course education can improve employment prospects. But its proper purpose, fully realized, is not merely to make better earners. It is to make better minds.