Nearly 50 years after the furnaces of Nazi Germany devoured their last victims, survivors and world leaders gathered beneath a bleak, disconsolate sky today to dedicate a museum chronicling man’s descent into darkness and the indifference to evil that marked the era. – Diana Jean Schemo in “Holocaust Museum Dedicated in Payment to Dead”
I realize it is possible that this post may be sent to the 9-11 dungeon, removed from the Greatest Page if it gets there, or locked. If it is, I will accept that without complaint, as I have accepted when some of these things have happened to my previous posts, undoubtedly because the subject matter of those posts was judged to be too unacceptable to too many Americans. The DU is at least in large part a political organization, and as such I believe that it has performed a great service for our country by spreading the truth about the many terrible things that have been going on in the United States over the past six and a half years. In order to fulfill that roll it must sometimes take care to lower the profile of posts that have the potential to cause other Americans to take us less seriously. That said, I do feel that I have something important to say here, so I will give it a shot.
I believe that George W. Bush and his administration are evil, and furthermore that it is very important for Americans to recognize that fact. “Evil” has been defined in many different ways. What I mean when I say that Bush and his administration are evil is that I believe that there is NOTHING that these people wouldn’t do to get what they want. And I do mean NOTHING.
Why evil should be recognized and identified as such rather than deniedThe reason that I believe that the evil must be explicitly recognized and stated rather than denied is very simple: People are unlikely to adequately address a serious problem unless they recognize the seriousness of the problem.
I disagree with one aspect of the quote at the beginning of this post. It was not
indifference to evil that marked the Nazi era. The great majority of human beings are not indifferent to evil. They shun it, and because the great majority of humans are not evil they have great difficulty in fully recognizing it, and therefore in mounting an adequate reaction against it.
The Holocaust should have taught us some important lessons. Denial of Hitler’s evil was widespread during the early years of his reign, not only in Germany, but throughout the world, despite an abundance of evidence that should have cut through the denial. It was largely because of the widespread denial of his evil that Hitler was able to perpetrate the Holocaust, which included the cold blooded murder of six million Jews, as well as World War II, with the additional loss of tens of millions of lives.
Early identification of Hitler’s evil, followed by appropriate reaction, would have prevented much or all of that. As it was, the problem was eventually recognized and responded to, but too late to stop most of the carnage. Had the recognition come later, the whole world may have sunk under Nazi control, leading to unimaginable multiplication of the Nazi horrors. But Britain and France finally recognized the problem in 1939, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. The United States became involved in the war in December 1941 after Pearl Harbor was attacked (though President Roosevelt fortunately recognized the problem well before that and had been providing Britain with much needed assistance, which helped her to survive Hitler’s onslaught). And finally even the German military recognized the problem, and hatched a number of
plans to assassinate Hitler starting in 1943.
The psychiatrist M. Scott Peck said much the same thing about the need to recognize evil in his best-selling book, “
People of the Lie”, which I read in about1989. The book is primarily about evil, and it may be the most interesting book I ever read. It is unusual for a psychiatrist to write about evil, since that concept is not a clinical term, but rather primarily a religious term. Dr. Peck is a Christian, and he writes about the subject from somewhat of a Christian perspective, while at the same time explaining it in terms that non-Christians (such as myself) can easily and vividly relate to.
Peck talks about the fact that many people don’t like to use the term because of its religious connotations. Yet evil is a fact of life in our world, and those who refuse to think or talk about it do so at their own peril. If you don’t use the word you are unlikely to recognize the magnitude of the problem even when it’s right in front of your face, in which case you will be helpless against it.
The denial of evilDenial is a very common psychological defense mechanism that people use in order to avoid the psychological pain of having to face something that is very unpleasant to them. It is so common that
all humans use it to one degree or another on occasion. But as we grow we learn to face things that were previously too difficult for us to face, and that is part of the process of emotional maturation. Mastering this process gives us the strength to face the world as it really is, rather than as we would like it to be.
There are many things that the United States as a nation denies (i.e., things that
most Americans deny). For example, we talk about concepts like freedom and democracy without full awareness of the many historical (and current) examples where we have denied these gifts to other people.
Another very important example of our denial as a nation is stolen presidential elections. It is this denial that is preventing the American people from rising up in outrage over the state of our current election system. A very ironic example is Andrew Gumbel’s book, “
Steal this Vote”. In this otherwise great book, Gumbel describes in great and accurate detail the faults and dangers of DRE voting machines, and yet he also claims that the 2004 presidential election was not stolen, while defending that claim with factually incorrect and illogical arguments of a kind that are found nowhere else in his book – as I describe in
this post.
But probably the most difficult thing for Americans to admit to as a nation is that their President is evil.
Sometimes when I talk to people I broach this subject, though I may not actually use the word “evil”. For example, I recently had a telephone conversation with my uncle, in which I brought up MIHOP. As usually happens when I bring this up to people, my uncle acted like I was some kind of nut, even though he very much dislikes Bush. I tried to get into the specifics with him, but he just didn’t want to hear it. His conclusion was something like, “I know he’s bad, but he can’t be
that bad.”
Why can’t Bush and his administration be that bad? You can’t discuss something with someone if they don’t want to hear what you have to say, so I had to give up on this issue with my uncle – for the time being. But if he would have been willing to discuss it, I would have asked him WHY he didn’t think that Bush could be that bad.
Why would someone dismiss out of hand the possibility that George W. Bush is evil? Could it be because they don’t believe that evil exists? If so, I would say that they don’t have a very good grasp of world history. Well then, maybe they think that evil is just something that exists in
other countries. Or maybe they think that although some Americans may be evil, certainly we couldn’t have an evil President. But why not? Other countries have had evil leaders. Why can’t our country? I’ll tell you why: Denial.
My belief that Bush and his administration are evil is not based on any single incident, but rather on a pervasive pattern. This is a man who
blew up frogs when he was younger. As Governor of Texas he
mocked a woman (Carla Faye Tucker) who pleaded for her life with him, mimicking her desperate pleas in discussions with other people. In the midst of a national disaster, with people dying by the thousands he sat around and
partied. And then, when he finally got to New Orleans he
ordered firemen to wait around and do nothing rather than save the dying people, just so that he could pose for a photo-op with them. Virtually every act of his presidency has been calculated to increase the wealth and power of his benefactors at the expense of the vast majority of Americans, many of whom have consequently been
driven into poverty. He created a war that has resulted in tens of thousands of
Iraqi civilian deaths and nearly three thousand
deaths of American soldiers – and
for no apparent reason other than to increase the wealth and power of his benefactors. He unilaterally decided that he is
not subject to the laws of our country. And worst of all, he
presides over the indefinite incarceration without charges or trial, and the torture of our prisoners of war – for no apparent reason at all.
So, for those who say that George Bush is not evil, or that he can’t be
that bad, I say “Give me a single example to make your point.”
But does that mean that he’s evil?BobcatJH recently posted an
excellent article entitled “Your suffering doesn’t matter to them” (referring to the Bush administration and their allies in Congress), where he made an airtight case for the title of his post with numerous references, some which I stole from him to use in the above paragraph. That raises the question, what is the difference between “your suffering doesn’t matter to them” and evil, and why do I think that’s important.
That is a very difficult question to answer. But let me start by stating some personal feelings that I have about this.
I am not personally afraid of the possibility of terrorist attacks on our country. But I am afraid of the Bush administration. Not just afraid for my country, but personally afraid. I’m afraid that someone will break into my house in the middle of the night and cart me off to a torture camp. I’m just a little bit afraid of that. But the only reason that I’m only a little bit afraid of that is that, in the large scheme of things, I’m really not very important. But if I had the kind of role that I’d like to have in bringing down this administration I would be terribly afraid. And more to the point, I think that the fact that they can do this kind of thing – and they can – without stirring up the outrage of millions of Americans means that our country has entered a dangerous zone akin to Nazi Germany in its early years.
Dr. Peck defines evil as much more than not caring about other people. “Not caring” is a passive concept, whereas evil is a very active concept. I’ll paraphrase Peck’s definition of evil from my memory of his book, and then I’ll give his definition that I just looked up on the internet (I think that very difficult concepts need to be stated in different ways in order to make them easier to grasp.) Basically, Peck defined an evil person as someone who is totally unwilling to admit fault or to try to understand him or herself. It’s just too painful. So, in order to avoid having to do that, the evil person spends his or her whole life trying to make other people and himself see himself as he would like to be seen, rather than as he really is. That means pretending, lying, killing, or whatever it takes. The bottom line is that no fault of an evil person can ever be corrected because trying to correct it would mean having to admit that it exists. Here is Peck’s
definition:
Truly evil people, on the other hand, actively rather than passively avoid extending themselves. They will take any action in their power to protect their own laziness, to preserve the integrity of their sick self. Rather than nurturing others, they will actually destroy others in this cause. If necessary, they will even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth. As the integrity of their sick self is threatened by the spiritual health of those around them, they will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them.
I define evil, then, as the exercise of political power – that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion – in order to avoid extending one’s self for the purpose of nurturing spiritual growth. Ordinary laziness is non-love; evil is anti-love.
Does that remind you of George W. Bush?
More specifically, why is this important?I already explained in general terms why I thought it is important to recognize evil. But why specifically is it important that people – lots of people – recognize that George W. Bush and his administration are evil, and say so?
I’ll tell you why. History has, or should have, taught us what evil people do when they get hold of the forces of a powerful nation. I believe that the Bush administration is the most (perhaps only) evil Presidential administration we have ever had, and that it poses the greatest danger to our country since our Civil War of 1861-5. And yet despite dismal approval ratings for both Bush and Cheney, the magnitude of the danger is not recognized by the good majority of Americans. I shudder to think what these people will do if they get much more power. It may not be too late to stop them. But if enough people don’t recognize the problem, then nothing is going to stop them.
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