Crossposted fromMY LEFT WING
Diane W suggested in an Open Thread at MLW that "... most evil is done in the name of self-righteous goodness."
And while I can understand how someone could come to that conclusion, I'm going to stick with Hannah on this one:
"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."
The Nazis were able to do what they did not because the vast majority of the "Good Germans" were filled with a self-righteous sense of goodness, a sense that what the Nazis were doing was somehow the RIGHT thing to do...
~~~~~(Though at first, yes, they were convinced -- easily, for they wanted to be convinced -- that the Jews were the reason Germany was suffering so much, and many of them did actively support the Nuremberg Laws...)~~~~~
But Kristallnacht? The ghettos? Jews beaten in the street by brownshirted thugs? And, finally, the Holocaust; did the majority of Germans sit in the bleachers alongside the railroad tracks and cheer the approach of more carloads of the damned?
No.The Nazis got away with it because the vast majority of "Good Germans" turned indifference into a goddamned ART form.
THEY SMELLED THOSE BODIES BURNING AND THEY DID NOTHING.
They knew exactly what was happening, and that it was happening in their name.
They. did. NOTHING.
Maybe they were afraid. I know I would be. So much to lose, and what might they accomplish, aside from getting themselves arrested, perhaps killed, their families destroyed?
Who knows -- perhaps some of them were "blogging" their outrage -- in whatever form available. I often wonder -- does that count as "doing something?" Do we get "credit" for caring? For blogging our little hearts out, screaming into the hurricane of noise that is this Internet and this world?
Would we know it if a few of the less prominent bloggers disappeared? When I visit a blog that doesn't exist anymore, or whose proprietor has failed to post in weeks or months, it crosses my mind... but then I dismiss it. Surely we'd know about it by now... But then, why would we? What if they start with the bloggers who don't have family or friends -- god knows there must be a lot of them out there. Hell, if I weren't married with a kid, I'd be one of those hermit types...
But let's just say, for argument's sake, that bloggers aren't facing danger in the same dire way that those who dissented in Nazi Germany did.
Regardless of the final outcome -- whether the fascists win and the world becomes more Orwellian than Orwell himself could have imagined, or we beat them back for another few generations, at least, and vindicate our own generations, save the race, the planet, the concept of equality -- when it comes to pass, whatever it is, will we be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and assert honestly that we did everything we could?
I know I won't.
Let's add up the actions I've taken to try to stop the dismantling of the Constitution, the ruthless, heartless murders of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, the seemingly inexorable deterioration of reproductive rights, of the right to free speech -- dear god, just about every right I hold dear has been systematically threatened and attacked by this grotesque regime. And what have I done to stop it?
Aside from attendance at a few protests against the Iraq Occupation, not missing a single vote at any level of government and plastering the back of my vehicle with enough bumper stickers to convince anyone driving behind me that I am a mad fool on her way to a drum circle...
I have blogged. I have blogged HARD. Got a little notice in the corporate media. Made a little name for myself as a left wing blogger, whatever that's worth. Definitely gave hope and encouragement to many people at times when they might otherwise have sunk further into the morass of despair we all know so well in these dark times.
Not a small thing, really -- but nothing one could look at and say, "That helped the cause."
I don't know what I am willing to do beyond that I've already done. I have a lot to lose, you see. I cannot set myself afire; I have a 7 year old son and I care more for his health and well-being than I do anything else in this world. Some revolutionary, eh?
But if they come for us all, will all I had to lose have been worth protecting with my inaction? I'm paralysed with indecision: should I commit to destroying a political and economic system I believe to be inherently evil? Or just coax it along toward the lesser evils -- you know, fight to increase the minimum wage when what I REALLY ought to be doing (at least I THINK it's what I really ought to be doing) is going underground and joining the few, the proud, the militant?
~~~~~ That's a loaded phrase I just used -- the one about the capitalist economic system being inherently evil. Must have elicited at least a few responses along the lines of Whaaaaa?
I know most of the economists out there will dismiss me as naíve, unschooled and pitifully idealistic in the very worst sense of the word. But here goes: I believe that our economic system as it is today -- NOT on paper, not in THEORY -- is inherently evil. And by that I mean that its effects are the same effects that result when a minority of people grasp and hoard the majority of resources that would, distributed equally, enable all humans to enjoy healthy and reasonably comfortable lives.
And while that majority struggles and suffers and sacrifices just to be able to live, the minority, hoarding all those resources, enjoys a standard of living that, when viewed side by side with the standard of living of most people, is grotesque in its greed, its sloth and its de facto deprivation of many people's basic needs. It is obscene.
When an economic system enables a privileged few to wipe their asses with gold-flecked toilet paper while a huge segment of the rest of the world's population would happily EAT that toilet paper to relieve the aching emptiness in their bellies -- well, that is an inherently evil system.
(While I don't really know if there is such a thing as gold-flecked toilet paper, I do know that there is a face cream that DOES have gold dust in it, being marketed to wealthy women wishing to reverse the aging process. The cost for LESS than an OUNCE of this face cream is$525. And it's not the only product out there whose primary sellingpoint is the purely superfluous inclusion of little bits of GOLD, put there specifically to let its consumers revel in the fact of their obscene wealth.)
The list of absurd ways to spend your "disposable income" when you're filthy rich is longer than the line at any soup kitchen. One more example before I throw up: The $5000 Fleurburger at the Mandalay Bay casino's Fleur de Lys restaurant. I kid you not: a FIVE THOUSAND DOLLAR HAMBURGER.
Created by Chef Hubert Keller, the FleurBurger 5000 ... is a Kobe burger containing foie gras, a special truffle sauce, and is served on a brioche truffle bun with black truffles on the side. The burger is served with a bottle of Chateau Petrus 1990 poured in Ichendorf Brunello stemware (you get to keep the stemware) imported from Italy, and a certificate of authenticity will be mailed to your home so you can brag to your friends about how you spent $5000 in Vegas...on a burger.
My husband thinks the only thing that will create real change in our country is a massive and searingly painful economic collapse. The kind that preceded the creation of the New Deal, the kind that enabled Roosevelt to introduce into the formerly heartless American economic system some of the less "offensive" aspects of a socialist system. I can't say as I disagree with Adam -- but I wonder, should we be sitting around waiting for that top happen (and it will, it's inevitable -- it's just a question of when) -- or should we be working actively to MAKE it happen? I don't think the inequities in this capitalist nightmare are comparable to the ones we saw prior to the "Great Depression," actually. I think we ought to be comparing them to the ones that preceded the beheadings and redistribution of wealth in 18th century France.
Big revolutionary talk from a middle class disabled housewife who can't even walk a mile. What can I say? I'm a thinker, not a doer. I'm in the LOFTY IDEALS & FUCK PRAGMATISM Department, dontcha know...
I'm not advocating storming the Bastille, mind you. I have no wish to see Bill Gates or Jay-Z lose their ugly little heads. But good god, why aren't the peasants revolting? The most common answer I'm given dissatisfies: the lure of the "American Dream" is so powerful that it keeps the hoi polloi in a constant state of pitiful delusion -- that at any moment they, too, might "strike it rich" -- that all the trappings of obscene wealth paraded before them on the materialist porn called "average television programming" might be theirs at any moment. Perhaps they'll win that gargantuan lottery prize. Perhaps they'll marry wealth.
I'm not buying it. I'm a big believer in the stupidity of the masses, but I don't think they're THAT stupid. I think they're too fucking tired to get educated, too afraid of losing what little they've got to rock the boat -- and pretty damned clearminded when it comes to knowing that their "representation" in the government isn't there to help them or represent them -- those politicians are there to serve their corporate masters. It doesn't take a college education to realise that, and at a pretty young age, too.
So the answer lies, as it almost always does, in education. I don't think for one minute that the majority of the voters in this country wouldn';t embrace socialised medicine, if they weren't so consistently bombarded with propaganda instilling in them a fear of anything even vaguely associated with "socialism" -- because "socialism," in this country's young consciousness, is just a hop skip and a jump away from Communism, and we all know what THAT'S about. Of course, damned few DO know what that's about. The 40 million people without health insurance would probably really appreciate socialised medicine. The countless people who have no HOME might really appreciate social services programs that actually gave them a decent chance to become independent and, you know, FED and shit.
I got a little off track, here; what a shock, eh? Started with the idea that we are all responsible for the evil being perpetrated in our name -- and ended up where, exactly? Letting everyone off the hook because they're too tired and too poor and too ignorant to know any better?
Jesus. It'd be realy nice if just ONCE I had a little certitude, instead of ending up asking more questions than the ones I started out trying to answer...
So. To quote a certain moronic Emperor... "There it is."
Or maybe that should be, "Too many notes."