Someone, sometime, invented matches.
Someone else found that one could chop wood
and apply matches to it and, if it happened to be dry enough, it would burn.
Someone else discovered that black stuff
oozing up from the ground in various places could be made into a number of
liquids that would burn if heated.
Someone discovered houses could be made
from wood, and people could take shelter inside.
Someone else discovered that one could burn
either different pieces of wood, or in a properly constructed container, some
of that black liquid and make the house warm.
All this was good.
And then one day, someone else…someone
stupid or evil or reckless or suffering from a lack of empathy with his fellow
humans, in short, a sociopath…came along and decided to open the valve on the
container holding the black liquid and let it run through the house. Then he
decided to strike a match, set a piece of wood on fire, and throw it into the
house.
Kaboom! He was so pleased with his
creation! He had taken three things that are quite harmless, even helpful, by
themselves and combined them in such a way that a horrific event and sorrow and
loss and years of rebuilding would result, and nothing would really be the same
again. While the stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man delighted in the truly
impressive mess he had created, the onlookers were a lot less overjoyed.
The land the house had been on had been
scorched, and would retain for eternity the odd bit of charring, the smell of
fire when a rock was overturned. The people would retain sadness at their loss,
even as they rebuilt. Their cat was nowhere to be found. They hoped he had
escaped, but the cages of their hamster and birds were charred, twisted bits of
metal with carcases inside. Their dog’s body was found under the timbers that
had fallen on their charred bed, next to his favorite toy, as if he had taken
it with him, seeking comfort from the people. They suffered, thinking their
beloved pets would think they had done this to them on purpose, when, of
course, they had not. They had simply not noticed the stupid, evil, reckless,
sociopathic man in their midst.
Aside from the lives destroyed, their
favourite comforting things―things they really liked and enjoyed and used and
had acquired through their toil―were gone. Worst, of course, was the fact that
other living beings they had loved were gone, and the pain of thinking of them
in their terror and seeming abandonment tore at the people’s hearts. And now,
of course, they would have to use the money they had saved to build another
house.
But they were afraid. The man who had
opened the petrol tank and tossed in a lighted match was still around. He had
powerful friends who thought he wouldn’t burn their houses if they just kept
him from being arrested for burning the little wooden house, the house the
people loved so very much, the house that had sheltered them and allowed them
to sing and dance and learn and love, and care for other living things.
There was nothing the people, the
householders, could do. The man’s friends were too powerful; the householders
feared that if they spoke up, they would lose their new house, too. But they
knew, sooner or later, the stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man would burn
another house. And if that stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man got too old
to wreak the havoc he enjoyed so much, another would spring up to take his
place.
But the householders would not act. They
would not even blame the stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic man for their
misery; they couldn’t. It was too painful. So they deflected the evidence of
their failure to lock their door against him by saying it was not him, that
someone else had invented the matches, wooden houses and oil products, and that
it was unfair to blame him.
Certainly, they refused to see that they
had failed to lock their doors against the stupid, evil, reckless, sociopathic
man; they refused to take responsibility for their own mistake. It was too
painful to think that, because they had seen the stupid, evil, reckless,
sociopathic man’s appearance as a friendly guy and failed to recognize the
devil within, they had allowed the disaster to happen. It was too hard to
understand that their own lack of vigilance allowed their happiness and comfort
and future to be destroyed, along with the lives of living things they had
loved.
They could not accept that they had enabled
the author of the greater part of humanity’s misery at the moment to put all
the diverse and individually neutral factors together in such a way that the
world caught on fire and took with it their hopes and dreams, and the hopes and
dreams of a great many of the world’s people.
***
And yet, it is true. No one else brought
all those disparate parts, harmless on their own, together in a wild
conflagration speading through a heartsick world, weakening the strong, killing
the weak. No one else, just George W. Bush, with the complicity of millions.
Only George W. Bush created strife and misery and wanton killing and abuse and
poverty unmatched in the modern era by being the only person to combine
independent harmless elements―of politics, of finance, of culture, or religion
gone awry―into an incendiary pile of his own making. Only George W. Bush―no one
else―opportunistically perverted innocent actions others had taken to
maliciously rend the fabric of nations.
George W. Bush did not single-handedly
cause the current disastrous conditions in the United States and the world. As
has been accurately pointed out, President Clinton signed some of the
legislation that allowed the financial meltdown. George W. Bush did not fly a
plane into the Twin Towers, but he did make a big show out of hunting down the
son of family friend’s the bin Ladens, failing miserably to find their wayward
son, but destroying multitudes in his a priori useless attempt. George W. Bush
did not create Saddam Hussein; doubtless he didn’t like him, or else perhaps he
liked Hussein’s oil more, and destroyed a nation and a culture and goodness
knows how many antiquities…not to mention, of course, soldiers of many nations
and civilians of one ancient civilization who had begged him in vain, as had
Karla Faye Tucker, for their lives. And he laughed at them, as he laughed at
her.
And he laughs still.
George W. Bush lied. He lied so that we
wouldn’t notice that it was he, and he alone, who took the matches and tossed
them into a house he had filled with flammable liquid. He lied so we would be
fooled into looking elsewhere―at stem cell research, at bowdlerized
religiosity, at down-home folksiness, at his sneering buffoon of a craven vice
president, at his grandstanding in various militaristic costumes claiming his
patriotism while gutting his nation fore and aft―while he burned down the
houses of nations.
It is the duty, first and foremost, of an
existentialist to connect the dots in human activities. It is the duty of an
existentialist, if that existentialist believes truly that existence precedes
and supersedes concept, to act on behalf of existence. It is the duty of an
existentialist to shed light on lies because whatever compromises the human
condition compromises all there is. It is a more fundamental, more basic belief
than the more prevalent belief in God as author of all that is. But it is not
one, ultimately, that is at odds with bona fide spirituality, a spirituality
that identifies the inimical and celebrates the good.
It is at odds with religions that pass off
execrable actions as sins to be forgiven rather than unethical acts to be
noted, prevented in future, even temporally punished. Forgiving execrable acts
is giving tacit permission for their repetition; pointing them out again and
again and again is the only reasonable response, until a sufficient mass of
people begin to understand the enormity of the offences against them, against
their personhood and everyone’s personhood, and demand cessation and
reparation. Forgiveness is immaterial; recognition of evil is essential. Taking
action against evil is highly to be desired.
Amen.
(Jesus driving the moneychangers from the temple. Rembrandt, 1626. Wiki commons)
