178. Between two “truths"

Between Two “Truths”

 

It strikes me, sitting here in the Republic of Turkey in the middle of Anatolia, that we in the United States see ourselves as divided between two “truths”: Covid 19 is a dangerous epidemical disease—Covid is a hoax; the election was fair—the election was fraudulent; January 6 was an attack on Democracy—January 6 was a legitimate protest; we should defund the police—we should fund more police; Public Television provides accurate news information—Fox News has the truth.

 

I could go on, but the important thing is that our belief systems precede and shape our “truths.” These belief systems are shaped over years with the mentoring of family, community, religion and peers. Facts occur to us as pictures through our eyes—directly or from photos or paintings or screens; words from pages, newscasts, social media, movies, and those spoken directly; sounds—from mouths and screens, tubes and tubas, wind, water, and weather; from touch and smell and taste. But they have to make it through the belief barrio for interpretation. Difficult: a vegetarian will gurgle at meat, cowboys I know hate the smell of sheep, and Bedouins wear layers against the sun that white Westerners meet with sunscreen. 

 

I believe that we grow into our beliefs as we grow into the clothes that we eventually find comfortable. There are many who love to change clothes frequently, or at least experiment with new ones, but all of us to some extent are prisoners to the garb—and the belief systems—that we’ve grown comfortable with.

 

Is it a stretch to think that whole countries behave similarly? Or that at the least the leaders of countries, whether elected, appointed, or having gained purchase by force, wear the countries they lead like garments, shake and hunker in them at new “facts” until they find comfort, looking to neighbors to see and hear and feel approval and disapproval?  

 

When Russia’s tanks rolled into Ukraine and its bombs hit Ukrainian cities, the world stepped up—almost in unison—to condemn Russia and support Ukraine. We—the world—reacted to the first images, the pictures and the sounds of war being waged by one powerful country onto a much smaller neighboring country.

 

But now the world’s nations—more accurately, the leaders of nations—are looking and listening past the initial images, and some number are finding that Russia’s truths are a more soothing fit to their worlds than are those of America and Western Europe and the Ukrainians under Russia’s boot.

 

How can we live together in a country in which belief-clothes are so different, and in a world where countries vary so much? How can we find some common truths? 

177. The Hangover

It struck me today, as I watched yet another news broadcast with horrible photos of the War in Ukraine, that, reeling from a long Covid-induced drunk, we’re bleary-eyed with the morning. As things have eased in recent weeks with shots and boosters and the immunization provided by the disease itself, we look back on a two-year long binge drunk. And we are hung over. 

 

Numbers of us sobered up from time to time, many with Covid, some of whom died and are still dying—although in smaller numbers. The easy ones, the old drinkers with little resistance—those with age and asthma and other health issues working against them—went first, with the grieving of a relative looking in the nursing home window. A few loud-mouthed braggarts who thought they could drink forever, without masks and shots, went down.  

 

We moderates minded our Ps and Qs, but are still shaking off the effects of the long-haul binge. We’re hungover, wondering whether we dare take a drink of fresh air, have a glass of wine in a restaurant or drink in a bar. Maybe a little taste—the hair of the dog. 

 

Or, “ah, to hell with it. Give me a Bloody Mary and put that War-thing going on in Ukraine up on the screen.” 

 

The next long drunk? 

176. Murder—up close and at a distance

In 1960, Israeli operatives captured Adolph Eichmann in Argentina, and brought him to Jerusalem for trial. Eichmann had been a Nazi leader in sending millions of European Jews into exile and death camps, and was a major figure in the “final solution”—to rid Germany entirely of Jews. 

 

The 1961 trial was broadcast world-wide, Eichmann testifying and watching from a glass booth. The social historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt covered the trial for the New Yorker Magazine, and in 1963 published the story in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Many Jewish leaders of the day harshly criticized Arendt, herself a Jewish refugee from Germany who had escaped before the War, for being soft on Eichmann, for understanding and explaining him.

 

What I recall—and it has been over 50 years since I read the book—is that the word in the title, “banality,” was used to describe Eichmann as, in many ways, a “normal,” even prototypically normal, human being. The fear she raised is that someone the court psychologists found normal by their measurements, someone who had been a less than stellar student but an outstanding bureaucrat who saw inferior humans as abstractions, had been capable of carrying out the atrocities that we now call the Holocaust. 

 

There were lesser Eichmanns of course, the people who stood Jews—and Gypsies, homosexuals, and communists—up in front of open pits and shot them to bury them; those who filled the gas chambers, who put people on meat hooks into ovens. And there were those who lived “normal” lives in villages within smelling distance of the camps. (After liberation, General Eisenhower took an entire village to a death camp and made them dig graves.)

 

I remember and write this today because of Ukraine. Yes, Putin is responsible for the holocaust that is happening before our screen-glued eyes. But what of the functionaries between Putin and the soldiers on the ground? And what of the soldiers themselves, who tied hands behind backs and shot people, who shot children in the streets? And what of those who launched and continue to launch long-distance missiles at hospitals and schools? 

 

When we consider the bureaucrats and these practitioners of long-range destruction of cities and people in Ukraine, does it come too close for us to leaders who sent soldiers and drone strikes that brought destruction to Afghanistan and Syria?

 

We fear a nuclear holocaust—rightfully so. But we and the world must learn how to stop the killing done by everyday soldiers and mobs—and by bureaucrats following orders and casting destruction from safe distances where the targets are only images on screens. 

 

We must do more than stand by until forced—metaphorically—to dig the graves of the victims. 

175. Two minutes on war--Murder

 Murder—up close and at a distance

 

In 1960, Israeli operatives captured Adolph Eichmann in Argentina, and brought him to Jerusalem for trial. Eichmann had been a Nazi leader in sending millions of European Jews into exile and death camps, and was a major figure in the “final solution”—to rid Germany entirely of Jews. 

 

The 1961 trial was broadcast world-wide, Eichmann testifying and watching from a glass booth. The social historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt covered the trial for the New Yorker Magazine, and in 1963 published the story in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Many Jewish leaders of the day harshly criticized Arendt, herself a Jewish refugee from Germany who had escaped before the War, for being soft on Eichmann, for understanding and explaining him.

 

What I recall—and it has been over 50 years since I read the book—is that the word in the title, “banality,” was used to describe Eichmann as, in many ways, a “normal,” even prototypically normal, human being. The fear she raised is that someone the court psychologists found normal by their measurements, someone who had been a less than stellar student but an outstanding bureaucrat who saw inferior humans as abstractions, had been capable of carrying out the atrocities that we now call the Holocaust. 

 

There were lesser Eichmanns of course, the people who stood Jews—and Gypsies, homosexuals, and communists—up in front of open pits and shot them to bury them; those who filled the gas chambers, who put people on meat hooks into ovens. And there were those who lived “normal” lives in villages within smelling distance of the camps. (After liberation, General Eisenhower took an entire village to a death camp and made them dig graves.)

 

I remember and write this today because of Ukraine. Yes, Putin is responsible for the holocaust that is happening before our screen-glued eyes. But what of the functionaries between Putin and the soldiers on the ground? And what of the soldiers themselves, who tied hands behind backs and shot people, who shot children in the streets? And what of those who launched and continue to launch long-distance missiles at hospitals and schools? 

 

When we consider the bureaucrats and these practitioners of long-range destruction of cities and people in Ukraine, does it come too close for us to leaders who sent soldiers and drone strikes that brought destruction to Afghanistan and Syria?

 

We fear a nuclear holocaust—rightfully so. But we and the world must learn how to stop the killing done by everyday soldiers and mobs—and by bureaucrats following orders and casting destruction from safe distances where the targets are only images on screens. 

 

We must do more than stand by until forced—metaphorically—to dig the graves of the victims.