Humanity’s problems are essentially spiritual or philosophical at their core; that is, they are rooted in misunderstandings about our own nature, and in an inability—or unwillingness—to face the truth about life and ourselves. So our political problems are rooted in psychology, and our understanding of history and politics affects who we think we are, and how we feel, and you’re back to psychology again—the knowledge of the soul, and of the mind.
Whose mind shall we study today?
I thought of Castro, archnemesis of Republicans, haciendas, and mafiosos, finally brought to his knees not by Greek mercenaries or exploding cigars, but by the same power that will one day humble every egoist, every supposedly great man—yes, you too Dick Cheney, despite what you’re being told by that doctor Kissinger—old age.
Castro is not my kind of leader; I’m a free speech zealot and an instinctive rebel; I wouldn’t last in Castro’s Cuba. On the other hand, as any revolutionary from Tom Paine to Trotsky will tell you: If you want to make an omelet, you gotta break a few eggs.
How come Castro is an evil mad-man but George Washington gets a free pass for killing Indians, Lincoln is hailed for suspending habeas corpus, TR is never critiqued for his blatant racist rhetoric or imperialist behavior, and nobody’s apologized for napalm? From where I’m standing, one man’s execution for treason is another man’s death squad is another man’s revolutionary sacrifice, and it all looks like a bad idea, suspiciously like murder, the problem not the solution, whether you’re wearing a white wig or a red star.
And no, I’m not a moral relativist. To the contrary. The relativists justify in their own nation the behavior they decry in others. I ask that we practice what we preach. And Castro would be a good case study, because Cuba could be a very different place if money didn’t run this country.
But weeks ago, I promised Hitler, and it’s Hitler you’re going to get.
Adolf Hitler, consensus “evil person of the millennium,” archetypal madman, singular villain of World War Two, is a perfect example of the human tendency to cause suffering out of ignorance. Not only did he embody all the worst about humanity, he now serves as a mythical figure upon which the rest of us can project everything we don’t want to see in ourselves. He is evil; we are good. He was crazy; we are sane. He wanted war; we want peace.
Not that these things aren’t true; it’s just that they are glib. Of course The American system is better than Nazism; that goes without saying. But shouldn’t we work a little harder than that, or are settling for “better than Nazism”?
Hitler was a fool because he loved war, believed in a supernatural form of nationalism, was a strict racist, and thought that it was heroic to exterminate unwanted ethnic groups. Americans would never believe anything like that, would they? Surely they wouldn’t act on those beliefs, right?
Actually, Adolf Hitler didn’t do anything new; war, expansionism, racism—all this was standard fare in Europe for centuries. Hitler just did it all with a fervor and efficiency that offended the gentile sensibilities of Anglos. All the western powers had colonies or protectorates which they’d taken over by force (in case you would exclude the U.S. from this, think Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, to start); all had some form of racial segregation in those colonies. Is this not Nazism if you are a native?
The United States had just 30 years earlier completed the virtual extermination of the Native nations of North America, literally decimating their people, eliminating most tribes entirely, taking the survivors’ traditional economies from under them along with their land, names, history, language, and religion, and crowding them onto virtual wasteland reservations.
How do you say “Vernichtung” in Lakota?
Meanwhile, African-Americans lived under a violently enforced Apartheid, and anti-Semitism was openly practiced throughout Western Europe and the United States. Blatantly racist immigration quotas of the 20’s and 30’s prevented thousands of Jews and other eastern Europeans from escaping death.
On what moral ground could the United States criticize Hitler? Not for being racist. Not for being expansionist. Not for starting wars; the US had invaded Central American and the Caribbean multiple times in the 20’s and 30’s simply to enforce neocolonialism. Not even for being anti-democratic; the United States had not only squashed democracy in Central American and Asia, it had stood by while the Nazis bombed Spain, with many American leaders and citizens grinning (and not a few fighting for the socialists). The United States wasn’t so unlike Germany in terms of our belief systems or international presence. Was Hitler not a slightly more candid version of our own shadow?
Before you say no, and come at me with tall tales of American benevolence, let me remind you (in case you forgot, because I’m sure they taught this in the public schools, right?) that some of the United States’ most prominent citizens—Lindbergh, Ford, Bush—are associated with fascism and Nazism.
For example, the America First Committee, open supporters of Nazism at its peak, included Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford as well as Thomas McCarter, the Director of Chase National Bank, Robert Wood, Chairman of Sears Roebuck, Douglas Stuart, a member of the Quaker Oats family and owner of the Fascist publication Scribner’s Commentary, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy Roosevelt’s socialite daughter and a distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. At its peak, the Committee boasted a following of 5 million members.
In November 1939, Charles Lindbergh wrote the following for the Reader’s Digest: “Our civilization depends on a united strength among ourselves; on a strength too great for foreign armies to challenge; on a Western wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or the infiltration of inferior blood; on an English fleet, a German airforce, a French army, an American nation, standing together as guardians of our common heritage, sharing strength, dividing influence…we can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.”
Reader’s Digest was owned and published by the pro-Fascist and anti-labor DeWitt Wallace.
And then my favorite: George Bush’s grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, and great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker, can be linked to several firms—Union Banking Corporation, Brown Brothers and Harriman, and Consolidated Silesian Steel Company—with close ties to Nazi Germany. National Archive files confirm that Bush and Walker had some of their assets seized in 1942 when the United States went after companies that were tied to slave labor and financing the Nazi military and even concentration camps. While there is no evidence Bush or Walker supported “the Final Solution,” it is obvious they understood his politics and backed him anyway.
Many Americans saw Nazism as the counter to Soviet power. Without American capital, it is possible Hitler’s war machine might never have grown so large. American spiritual support didn’t hurt either; Time named him Man of the Year in 1933—anything, it seems, is better than Red. Can you say “blowback?” Does anyone else see a pattern?
Saddam Hussein was armed to the teeth by the United States to counter a perceived greater threat in Iran: populism. It might have taken one of two forms—socialist democracy, or theocracy. That the United States had for years supported the oppressive Shah did not help the course of events. The Reagan administration proceeded to arm both Iraq and Iran, much to the glee of California’s arms industry. Hussein gassed Kurds and Shi’ites with American helicopters and satellite intelligence and no one blinked. Before he was our enemy, he was our boy—a strong ruler, a friend to the United States. Then he stopped playing by our rules—or perhaps, he tried to play by our rules (do whatever you want) instead of the rules we set out for him (do whatever we say). And then he became “evil.” (Though not so evil that Dick Cheney wasn’t willing to business with him throughout the 1990’s)
Are our rulers really such poor judges of character? Of course not. They just understand the way the world works: The strong survive, and meek lose the game. As it is, as it always shall be, right? Thus the “freedom fighters” of Afghanistan later became the “evil Taliban” and the theocratic fascist Saudi king can walk hand in hand with an American president; oil consumption trumps women rights every time, obviously.
Among the most pressing realities we Americans need to confront is that the foreign policy of the United States is not always (and I suspect not even often, or, really, ever) conducted with moral methods (except when they are as convenient as the immoral methods available) or primarily for moral ends. Self-interest is not just the bottom line, it is the raison d’etre for the Pentagon, Department of State, CIA, and every action taken by the military or intelligence services. Morality is a good cover story, nothing more or less. Many of us know this already; if you listen closely, you can hear the President himself say it; in Africa he repeatedly informed reporters that he had come because Africa represents vital security interests for the United States—glib pronouncements about mercy and charity notwithstanding. Self-interest must be at the bottom of his actions; patriots won’t stand for altruism without benefit, not on their tax dole. Yet when war arrives, we repeatedly convince ourselves there is a moral cause at stake, perhaps because it’s easier to kill and die for high honor and truth than for commodity futures security or real estate.
Of course, if you see the American way (whatever that is) as the only way, you are apt to view any action in defense of American interests as prima facie, even a priori good. This argument is faulty twice, though: Once because America isn’t perfect and many other countries are fine places to live and therefore our equals, and twice, because even if America is the hottest thing going, we don’t get the right to kill people except in self-defense.
Once at a peace vigil in Belmont Shore, a man calling himself a Catholic, a man with family, a sane, intelligent man—he even bought me sushi for dinner so we could keep arguing—told me this:
“The United States has a moral right—indeed a duty—to kill people if that is required to keep cheap oil flowing from the Middle East.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised—I’ve heard Rush Limbaugh say it and I know George Bush and many of his fans believe it, some, perhaps, unconsciously. But I was shocked, and dismayed, that this self-identified Christian would say that. I snapped back:
“So if killing for resources is okay, where’s the line? How about the atom bomb for the finest silk?”
But he didn’t want to take that road, he didn’t want to examine his ideas and their implications, chief among which is the fact that we participate in suffering and even in evil; we ignore it, benefit from it, justify it, even occasionally fund it and I’ve heard a few of us cheer it.
And that takes its toll on the soul.