A Study of Evil

 In modern times, we tend to cite the actions of Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot as among the extremes of recorded evildoers. At the other end of the spectrum, we find easily overlooked acts such as cruel jokes, injurious falsehoods, and minor deceits. We also find evil exposed as morally wrong but legally exonerated.

Speaking of legalities, it is for certain that, given careful legal design, laws can, in fact, make evil legal and protect the evildoers. Consider the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany, the Jim Crow Laws (which seem to be reemerging) of the post-war South, and the arbitrary, but punishable, laws promulgated in church-based states.

Media and entertainment sources even have us emotionally lauding the evildoer. A popular film of 1974 in America was Death Wish, based on novel of the same name by Brian Garfield. In it, Charles Bronson played a mild-mannered architect who turns vigilante after the murder of his wife and the sexual assault of his daughter. In short, he turns to slaying the types of people who slayed his wife. The theme resonated with a public who saw an increase in violence within the country.

In reality, Americans witnessed the dark side of vigilantism in 2020 when self-style protectors of the law stalked an innocent man believed to harbor an evil intent, resulting in the victim’s death. Lengthy prison sentences communicated the dark side of evil for evil transactions.

Do evil interactions predict increasing intensity of evil? This is a controversial topic but some research in psychology and criminology shows that people who commit acts of cruelty to animals do not stop there—many of them move on to their fellow humans.[i] This is not meant to imply that cruelty to animals is a lessor sin than cruelty to humans, only that there is a correlation worthy of investigation.

The we come to the “but for” instances in which a person doesn’t set forth to do evil but commits it when it could have been avoided had not the first steps been taken. Americans are still arguing over a case in which two deaths and a maiming could be been avoided had the perpetrator, found innocent in a court of law, simply not decided to travel to a particular location in a particular state of readiness. In short, but for deciding to travel to a particular site, tragedy would not have occurred.

Intent to perform evil is a tricky concept in American law and an equally elusive issue in the pursuit of morality.

Even trickier is the concept of forbearance. Writers including Elie Wiesel, Victor Frankl, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and the recently deceased Desmond Tutu have all spoken eloquently and all agreed upon the fact that forbearance of evil is evil itself.

A 1996 book further argues that the German populace was quite universally aware of, and tacitly condoned, the treatment of Jews under the Nazi regime. The author’s explanation proved controversial, but the facts were not. People knew and did nothing.[ii]

Picking one of the writers mentioned above, we part with a quote from Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel:

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.”[iii]

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[i] Catherine A. Faver & Elizabeth B. Strand (2003) Domestic Violence and Animal Cruelty, Journal of Social Work Education, 39:2, 237-253, DOI: 10.1080/10437797.2003.10779134

[ii] Goldhagen, D. J. (1996). Hitler's willing executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf.

[iii] Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on December 10, 1986

 One of the more argued aspects surrounding the study of evil is the question of forgiveness, or even acceptance. Are there examples of evil deeds that warrant understanding in context (UIC)? It seems so. The state in which I live observed, for many years, a holiday honoring a traitor who abandoned an oath he took to protect the United States of America and, instead, elected to lead a vicious war against that country in an attempt to perpetuate the institution of slavery. If a UIC can cause us to condone the support of evil such as was employed against African Americans, what else is eligible for redemption?

What about a war against the most precious of innocents, our children?

Jacob Riis was a journalist, photographer, and social reformer during the late 1800s and early 1900s. In his classic work, How the Other Half Lives,[1] he called attention to the neglect of the poor in our country, particularly the child laborers. In his notes, he observed that child labor exists:

Wherever the street is the only playground of the children;

Wherever they are dragged into the police courts, when they ought to be at school,

There is the slum waiting to raise its head.

Wherever men sell their votes and their consciences, it is only just around the corner.

One child, under five years of age, when interviewed and asked how long he had been working, could only reply, “since I was.”

He concluded, in a famous passage, “How shall the love of God be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man?” An earlier philosopher, a follower of the same god, noted, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”[2]

Many take this as a UIC, as an admission that some forms of evil are so persistent as to justify neglect.

Others say, about an instance of evildoing, that “You just had to have been there.”

During the winter months, we often note the date of the execution of United States Army Private Eddie Slovik on January 31, 1945. He was the only American soldier executed for desertion, some say cowardice, during America’s involvement in World War Two. A month after Christmas, they led him to a lonely garden in France, placed him in front of a stone wall, in order to avoid stray bullets injuring someone, and fired 11 rounds of .30 caliber bullets into him from 12 M-1 Garand rifles. From accounts, he faced the ordeal with resolve, even bravery.

As with many, if not most things in our country, it remains a divisive issue. Some say it stands as an extreme case of cruelty, i.e. evil, to have chosen one of thousands of deserters as an example. They argue that he fit a handy profile, an admitted deserter with a former felony background, no children, and a lackluster military career. He, himself argued, “They’re not shooting me for deserting the United Stated Army—thousands of guys have done that. They’re shooting me for bread I stole when I was 12 years old.”

Others point out that Private Slovik was offered, on multiple occasions, clemency if he would return to his unit for duty. He refused. They also note that there was a feeling at the time among American soldiers that the war was almost over and it wasn’t a good time to die. Morale was lagging in the midst of the Battle of the Bulge in which a massive German counter-offensive threatened to send the war into another long period of horror for the entire world. The execution of one deserter, under clearly established military law and a fair trial, in order to instill resolve and discipline in others remains, in some minds a UIC.

The tricky point of UICs, some of which deserve detailed analysis, is that unethical forces can use their false cousins for evil purposes. The talents of Joseph Goebbels, and the efficacy of modern media sources, support the contention that a large segment of the public falls prey easily to constantly repeated entreaties by false prophets.

We need only ask the innocent victims of Baghdad, or January 6, 2021.

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[1] Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August), 1849-1914. (1970). How the other half lives. New York :Garrett Press,

[2] Matthew 2611 NIV

 DEFENCES

  Why do normal people embrace evil? Setting aside the possibility of mental disorder, we come to the so-called “Nuremberg Defense.” This emerged from the Nuremberg trials following World War Two. In these surviving German leaders faced judgement before and International Military Tribunal (MIT) for horrendous crimes perpetuated by Nazi Germany, including the Holocaust.[i]

From the trials came the now-famous, and often lampooned defense: “I was only following orders.”

Later, In 1962, the concept arose again during the trial of Adolph Eichmann, who was tasked with, and carried out energetically, the “final solution” designed at the Wannsee Conference of 1942. Israeli agents had captured Eichmann in Argentina and ferreted him to Jerusalem to stand trial. While there, he wrote that he and other high-ranking officers were “forced to serve as mere instruments.” Among the orders he followed, as such an instrument, included directives to murder every last person in Europe determined to be of Jewish descent as determined by precise laws established in pre-war Germany. In Eichmann’s case, as has been mentioned earlier, the defense didn’t work. His evil past hung with him as he hung from the scaffold.

That same year, a Yale University psychologist, Stanly Milgram, conducted a series of studies designed to test whether, indeed, ordinary people, including our “terrifyingly normal,” would inflict harm upon others when receiving orders from a higher authority.[ii] In other words, it was an experiment designed to test “Obedience to Authority.” At the time, the results of the experiments indicated, rather alarmingly, that ordinary people did, indeed, harbor a sea of evil potential.

The study has since enjoyed a great deal of examination, criticism, support, and some refutation, What happened, though is that test organizers convinced a group of student participants that they were involved in a study to test the relationship between pain and cognizance. In short, they were to apply electrical shocks, in increasing severity, to other participants who gave wrong answers to questions in a highly controlled and supervised situation. They administered the shocks, under the watch of variously bedecked authority figures, to test participants in a controlled environment.  The reactions of the test victims were visible and quite dramatic, as they should have been for they, and the authority figures, were actually actors. The degree of electrical shock, at times theoretically lethal, applied under orders didn’t actually shock the participants, but it did shock the academic community when the results were published.

We’ll drop anchor for a short spell for the readers to carry out some homework, under orders of course. Anyone interested in the evil performed while following orders must read an account of the Milgramexperiments. They still shock.[iii]

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[i] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Introduction to the Holocaust.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust. Accessed on December 23, 2021.

[ii] Milgram. S (1963) Behavioural Study of Obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-78.

[iii] Brown, R. (1986). Social Forces in Obedience and Rebellion. Social Psychology: The Second Edition. New York: The Free Press.

A Study of Evil

  LEVELS

Is all evil equal in scope? Hardly. Bearing false witness may get one person sent to prison and another elected to high office. Each day we overlook those who endanger others by careless and evil actions. There are scales and degrees. Let us say levels of evil behavior.

One can’t imagine or discuss, though, the Holocaust without classifying it as one of the most evil phenomenon ever perpetrated by a group of individuals. In a spirit not of simplification but of management, let us use it, along with the cleansing of Cambodia, the purges of modern Russia, and others as ore from which we might mine answers. How did those atrocities occur in the presence of knowing witnesses? Who were the prime movers, who the secondary, and who was further down the line? This will require a great deal of value judgements, but that is precisely why we use these examples.

Following is a suggested order of the primacy of evil phenomenon:

Supreme Catalysts: Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot come to mind immediately. Let us simply say that, at this level of evildoing, the evil phenomenon in question may have never happened, or at least would have never reached its level of ferocity had these individuals died at birth or some point prior to the culmination of the onslaught of evil. In History’s Gallery of Evil, they and their lot hold the highest of thrones.

Takers of Advantage: Let us take Tomás de Torquemada, (born 1420, Valladolid, Castile [Spain]—died September 16, 1498, Ávila, Castile), first grand inquisitor in Spain, whose name has become synonymous with the Christian Inquisition’s horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism.[i]

The Spanish Inquisition would likely have occurred had Torquemada never been born. He was able, though, to attach it to a disenoblement of human history, even religion, itself. (Yes, I know that’s probably not a word, but it’s the only term I could think of.) His motivation died with him but it is not hard to imagine that the enrichment of friends and associates, or even himself, may have played a part.

The crew of sycophants who surround the Takers of Advantage often seek advantage of their own. Hitler could not have conducted his evil empire nearly as effectively without the support of those like Himmler, Eichmann, Goering, Speer, and Goebbels. We only need to turn on our TVs today to see the faces of modern sycophants seeking to ride the evil tide, one created by their master, to glory, fame, power, or riches.

Closer to the historical home front, it makes us shudder to learn that some of the financial leaders of New York City wanted to recognize the Confederacy, and its evil purpose, because of their close association with cotton producers.[ii] To paraphrase a modern idiom, “Money talks and honor walks.”

Riders Along: Moving a step down from those who gain from evil, we find those who simply go along with for reasons hidden from view. This begins what many now feel is the truly frightening levels of the “movers and shakers” of evil doings. They enable evil before our very eyes because we have classified them as decent, honorable people. Consider the American general who allowed his troops to capture free Americans and transport them to slave states.

Continuing with the Nazi example, (perhaps the most familiar to us) we find a scale of perpetuators ranging from the commander of the submarine that sank the Lusitania to the Prussian general corps. They allow the winds of evil to fill the sails of history.

Turners of Heads: Even more frightening is the group that sees evil and does nothing. We will seek motivations in the next chapter. Let’s just say for now that these represent the rudders that are never turned though the shoals are quite visible and dead ahead. Apathy destroys by allowing evil to destroy.

Members of a Mob: Of all the members of the forces of evil, this is the only group that might ultimately express repentance. Unable to deny participation, their only defense is having chosen poorly because of the excitement and delirium of the moment. Sadly, they often must stand before the smoldering ruins they have created when seeking our understanding or forgiveness.

Takers of Scalps: The most disgusting movers of evil don’t take part in its execution. They don’t claim participation in any group associated with the damage it causes. When pressed, they deny even being on the scene. But they were. They are like the nonparticipants who rush onto the scene of battle after the warriors have left and proceed to scalp the wounded and rob the dead. All they do, they say, is “report the facts.” Today, as most of us know, facts are not “stubborn things,” as John Adams once said. Instead, they are proprietary things, as owners of news channels use them. Others claim to represent the Galilean while preaching the opposite of his words like some religious episode of the comic book empire of “Bizzaro World.”

The flotilla of evildoers looms large. Do we dare question their choice of courses to travel? Stay tuned.

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[i] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2021, September 12). Tomás de Torquemada. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tomas-de-Torquemada

[ii] Widner, Ted. Lincoln on the Verge New York: Simon and Shuster, 2020

   Becalmed

 We find ourselves becalmed now in a sea of doubt. If we are to study evil, we must tackle some headwinds in our pursuit of its actual nature.

The first item we find floating past is the concept of context. Anyone who has dealt with modern religious aficionados knows that this is a common defense of doctrinal contradictions. The “taken out of context” explanation ranks only second to the “his ways ain’t our ways” dodge.

Some modern “theologians” would no doubt find themselves unable to speak if forbidden the use of the phrase “out of context.”

An anecdotal story from my own life can set the stage for an explanation of how tricky the concept of context becomes when applied to real-life situations.

Someone who was very dear to me was taken from a rural life on an Arkansas farm in the mid-1940s and mustered into the United States Army to go and fight the Axis powers in Europe. There, he survived unspeakable horrors before his side won. He would speak of artillery attacks in which he, “would want to live one second longer, just one second.” He also told of a stray shell, listlessly fired by Germans during the last days of the war, taking off the head of “the shortest man standing in line for chow.”

The Army disbanded his division, the 79^th Infantry, after VE day and he moved to the First Infantry Division.

Yes, that First Infantry Division: The Big Red One.

Remember that the U.S. was still at war with Japan at that time, and that country’s leaders had vowed resistance to an invasion by every man, woman, and child in the country, using every cannon, gun, plane, knife, sword, implement, stone, and stick available. Not a pleasant scenario for a member of a unit renowned for being assigned to “the first wave.”

When evil prevents evil, is evil sanctified by context? Was the vaporizing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians through the first use of nuclear weapons—an evil end that eliminated further resistance and obviated the end of plans for further military invasions—justified?[i]

We will be debating that question when the remaining homo sapiens take their last breaths, sigh and say, “Look what our hands have wrought.”

Spoiler alert: The man in question survived the war and occupation, returned home, married, and helped produce a beautiful daughter to whom I am still married after 49 years.

It gets murkier, not the story but the consideration of context.

We drift along and encounter some complicated concepts. They are far beyond the scope of this amateur analysis but deserve mentioning.

The first is one currently in play with regard to the idea of sexual orientation. We shouldn’t tack anywhere near that emotional squall, or must we? We’ll see.

The concept is one called “social constructionism.” This is a theory stating that characteristics typically thought to be immutable and solely biological—such as gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality—are products of human definition and interpretation.[ii]

It only requires a look at how the female of our species fares in an historical context to see the ideas creating social construction as a valid concept. In early creation myths, woman is sometimes simply a catalyst for the development of man.[iii] Later, she becomes property, the earliest forms of marriage simply being a contract by which a man protected his harem from theft or, uh, invasion.[iv] In some later societies, woman enjoyed the simple definition of a thing possessing ovaries. We follow a tortuous path of supporting roles to modern times wherein, as a social construction, we create “categories based on certain bodily features; we attach meanings to these categories, and then we place people into the categories by considering their bodies or bodily aspects.”[v]

Let us steer from the dangerous shoals and drop in on the Wannsee Conference outside Berlin on January 20. 1942. There, with the aid of a translator no doubt, we hear high-ranking Nazi officials determining what some historians call “the final solution,” i.e. which innocent humans deserved to be slaughtered by the regime and how. We hear them deciding if a person’s “Jewishness” (a major standard for extermination) relied on a fractional portion of racial “blood” or perhaps whether an individual considered herself, himself, or, one supposes, their children, Jews. What is particularly terrifying is that their production goal (11 million) relied on countries which they hadn’t yet conquered but would get to as soon as they finished with Russia.

Those decisions were social constructs, not fact-based. The evil was not that the victims were Jews. The evil was that the Nazis slaughtered six million of them. Perhaps (almost) all of us can agree that this was not an act perpetuated by “some fine people."

Ahh. A breeze. Let us sail away from this dreadful spot.

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[i] See: Hersey, J. (1946). Hiroshima. New York: A.A. Knopf.

[ii] Saraswati, A. P. L. A., Shaw, A. P. B., & Rellihan, H. (2017). Introduction to women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Oxford University Press.

[iii] Genisis: 2:4-25 NIV

[iv] Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Story of Civilization. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935.

[v] Saraswati, et al, op cit

  Traversing the Narrows

 In seeking a temporary working definition of evil, let us first say that it is an act of humankind, to be distinguished from the mysterious workings of a spirit, a phenomenon, or a god. As an act, it must be planned and enacted by a person or persons. As an act, it must be planned and executed against a person or persons. As an act, it must deprive a person or persons of the ability to continue life in a state of well-being, safety, and opportunity. Finally, as an act, it must involve intent.

Accepting these for the present, questions arise immediately. If we accept the fact that evil thrives from the actions of a prime agent, say an Adolph Hitler, are there attendant gradations?

Are those who support the actions of the prime agent themselves the doers of evil? This becomes cloudy if the support falls within the acts of nationalism. It can lead to what we might call the Nuremburg Defense.” As mentioned earlier Adolph Eichmann used it later after being captured by Israeli agents and put on trial in Jerusalem for his role in the murder of millions of Jews and other innocents. As a primary functionary in the Holocaust, he claimed that he was “only following orders.” His performance during the trial prompted writer Hannah Eichmann to observe:

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”[i]

Are seemingly normal people who are drawn into evil acts under the spell of a charismatic leader guilty of the evil acts resulting from the following of orders? This question becomes a complex one when we consider orders that aren’t given directly. Instead, they may be implanted by nefarious sources and strengthened by repetition until the irrational among us assume that they are called to an almost divine directive. The resulting rampaging mob may not represent “some fine people” but it does contain, among its throbbing mass, some who we had once considered “terribly and terrifyingly normal.”

Speaking of following orders, at least one religious figurehead ordained that we do not judge others in order that we, ourselves, might not be judged.[ii] If we are to understand the nature of evil at all, however, we must resolve the question of “moral obedience,” a possible one-time act that resulted from achieving a stated end. Standing in opposition to this is the Kantian concept of “moral imperative,” or conduct that is absolute and not dependent upon any desire or end.[iii] Further, though not widely researched, evidence exists that German soldiers who refused a part in the murder of the innocents were not punished but simply reassigned.[iv]

There, at the end of the day’s cruise, we must, I think, abandon the obedience, or Nuremburg, defense. The ashes of the innocent that still cover the fields of Europe demand it of us.

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[i] Arendt, Hannah, op cit

[ii] Matthew 7:1 NIV

[iii] Kant, I., & Beck, L. W. (1956). Critique of practical reason. New York: Liberal Arts Press.

[iv] Goldhagen, D. J. (1996). Hitler's willing executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf.

A Study of Evil

 TIGHTENING THE RIGGING

 As we sail into troublesome philosophical waters, a precursory look at the essence of evil leads to a precursory finding: Nobody agrees. Not only that, we find diametrically opposed beliefs as to the very foundations of evil. We read of witnesses at the Nuremburg trials recount how Nazi guards threw live babies and children into a fiery pit in order to save on gas or bullets.

“That’s evil,” we say. “That’s an evil act if there ever was one.”

Then we close our eyes and hear the sound of water-soaked bodies—babies, children, adults, and animals—thudding into the hull of the ark in which Noah and his family ride out the flood.

Where is the tipping point between “I know evil when I see it,” and “His ways ain’t our ways?”

Can we depend upon our numerologist friends? Is evil quantifiable? We read of Joseph Stalin overseeing the execution on nearly 800,000 of his countrymen (not including deaths attributable to imprisonment, starvation, disappearance, etc.) during his reign, under his “no man, no problem,” view of leadership.

“That oughta do it,” we might think.

But wait. What about the character in the Charlie Chaplin film, Monsieur Verdoux? His most famous line stops us in our numerical tracks. Henri says, “Wars, conflict - it's all business. One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow!”

Years later, Bob Dylan voiced a similar thought in one of his classics when he observed,

“Steal a little and they throw you in jail.

Steal a lot and they make you king.”[i]

Let us forget numbers as well as stature. As the Galilean himself observed, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."[ii]

Would we be safe, then, in stating that evil, however we choose to define it, can be a phenomenon exerted upon an individual, a group, a sect, a nation, or an entire planet?

Good. Let us trim our rigging and sail on in our quest.

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[i] What’s a Sweetheart Like You Doing in a Place Like This? ©Universal Tunes

[ii] Matthew 25:40, 45, NIV

Orphans in a Storm

 Sometimes there just isn’t anything you can say about a situation. In fact, I have come to realize that for some situations, it’s just better to say nothing. Saying something you had to think up that might fit the moment just sounds like a self-serving plea for absolution. I found that out years ago.

Two days after James Earl Ray murdered Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, the I – Corps area of the then Republic of South Vietnam was tense, almost as tense as it was the previous January during the Tet Offensive. Bars were closed and all access to alcohol stopped. American military bases were on “lockdown,” and nobody was saying much, not much at all in our compound just outside Da Nang. Events halfway around the world had our little universe on the brink of explosion.

That morning, they chose me—perhaps because I was a little older than most in the Naval Security detachment—and another sailor because he was an unofficial leader among what everyone called “the brothers” back then, to guard the far back gate of our compound. We knew one another as shipmates, nothing more. We were just two wary souls thrown together in the face of a storm we neither chose nor caused. They told us that no one was to leave, and no one was to enter.

I strained my brain for the six hours while we stood the watch for something to say. Nothing came. So we did our duty and stopped anyone from leaving and joining some fracas or other. I stopped the white sailors and he stopped the black sailors. Had any of them refused, I have no idea what would have happened. We, of course, would have been fully authorized to fire upon them. To this day, I don’t know what would have happened. We stood our watch and turned the post over to our reliefs. It was dark by then and tensions had cooled. We nodded to one another and parted. I was sent up to a mountain compound shortly thereafter and I don’t think we ever saw one another again.

I’m not African American, so I cannot even imagine what it would be like to be in constant strife with the authority around me. I cannot image what it would be like always to stand guilty whether innocent or not. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be viewed as a lesser form of citizen. I have endured curt glares and some caustic comments, but only because of some service ribbons given to me “by a thankful nation.” Those looks and comments mostly came from fellow servicemen, so I had to overlook them.

I’ve never been a police officer. Those I have known personally have been honorable people. I have no idea how it would feel to drive the mean streets of a city on the midwatch, with suspicious eyes staring from every windshield and every bedroom, not knowing which car seat contained a loaded pistol. I do know that I’ve been alone during those same dark hours with the safety of my comrades in my hands, so scared I would have shot my own mother had she burst out of the jungle and ran toward me.

So I’ll pass no judgement on the community of police officers. Neither will I condemn those who riot. I have no idea what I would do if my genetic improbabilities had developed differently. I’d probably be rioting, but who knows?

I’ve witnessed and watched, though, and I’ve lived a long time. I feel entitled to make some observations, not judgments mind you, just observations.

Sadly, there is a percentage of Americans who simply don’t like people of color. It may be from ignorance, lack of communion, radical nurture, tribalism, a penchant for homogeneity, shortsightedness, fear, racial prejudice, bigotry, xenophobia, or some social disorder. We used to call it all those things. We’ve now collapsed them, and linguistically elevated them to the simple “racism.” Wars on nouns are always dicey, but this one sets a particularly high bar.

Now I don’t know what the percentage of those to whom I referred is. I suspect it’s around 30 percent of white Americans, larger in the South. It's not enough to determine elections if the righteous and pure of heart wish it otherwise. I do know something about white Americans of righteous bearing. It is good to have them on your side, or at least in tacit support of one’s fundamental rights as a human being. That tacit support can be a strong ally. Ask the American Freedom Fighters of the 1960s. I also know that it is subject to being added to or taken from, sometimes becoming a welcome ally, at others a missing friend. Ask Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, both affected by the margins. Increasingly, it seems to me, those increments determine our elections.

I'm not talking only about those who sit out elections. I'm also talking about those who may base a vote on the fact that a freeway was blocked by protesters while they tried to get their sick child to a hospital. Unfocused retribution falls on the just and the unjust.

Adroit politicians and those whose primary purpose is to win first and be right later, will avoid actions that effect the tacit support that can determine revolutions as well as elections. I know that elections increasingly turn on small increments of support.

I also know that Donald Trump is an expert at manipulating the support and moving the flexible fringe toward his side.

He needs no help whatsoever.

Taunts

Sickening. That’s how I feel about the misguided citizens and thugs showing up at state capitols, some with weapons, some reportedly paid to participate, all oblivious to the lessons of history. The most nauseating sight is of a person carrying as sign reading "Arbeit Macht Frei." For those who don’t know, and there are an alarmingly high number who don’t, this was a favorite slogan of the Nazis who ran Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. It literally means “work sets you free.” It appeared first, I believe, at the jourhasuaz, or entrance to Dachau concentration camp near Munich. That one started as a place of containment for political and other prisoners. It later housed Jews and other "enemies of the Reich."

Eventually, 40,000 people died there. I don’t think the person carrying the sign knows that.

The sign at Dachau was copied by other camps, most famously at the  Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps, and has become a symbol of the cruel taunting of people so debased that they would exterminate those whom they consider "lazy and egotistical" faul und selbstsüchtig. For the person in the picture, that apparently includes the elderly.

A little quiz for the few who may think these Koch-funded terrorist are simply protesters. Want to guess which ones below understand the true intent behind the Nazi term "Arbeit Macht Frei?" Oh, and by the way, the governor of the state where this “thing” is protesting is Jewish.

That is what America has become for some. I don’t know whether to puke or burn my Honorable Discharge.

The End of Truth

Yesterday we watched the segment of the film version of Band of Brothers, where the unit discovers the remnants of a Nazi concentration camp.

We find it particularly disturbing that a major political party in the United States of America is fostering a sub-cult that believes, and teaches, that the World War Two atrocities against the Jewish population of Europe never happened. The president of the United States of America has opined of the sub-cult, "Some are fine people." A sickening percentage of this party doubts the truth of the Holocaust

How can this be true? There are films. The U.S. Army Signal Corps made sure that the findings were filmed in detail.

There were millions of personal accounts by survivors and victims families.

There were remnants: stacks of shoes, eyeglasses, human hair, gold teeth, and suitcases.

There were books by survivors.

There were even trials and executions.

We knew the truth and the stench stained our nostrils.

Then came Fox "news." It became both effective and fashionable to spread falsehoods. The act itself created a profit center for the major stockholders, an Australian and a Saudi.

This was followed by an attack on education, particularly science and history. Africans captured from their homes, stacked like cord wood, shackled like animals, and shipped across the ocean were no longer slaves, but "guest workers" seeking employment in the New World.

Evangelicals like Franklin Graham began using the Holy Bible to preach hate instead of love and grace.

Truth may be dead. If so, America may pay an awful price for this.