Evil is Unspectacular

 

July 21, 2018

Anyone who’s ever witnessed an abusive relationship recognizes the signs.  The sudden embrace of a charismatic, domineering, and aggrieved partner.  The head-snapping changes in personality, tastes, and preferences.  The lashing out at friends and family.  The blame games and denials of any wrongdoing.  The refusal or inability to acknowledge any change in themselves.  And ultimately, invariably, the casting aside of both people and principles held so closely for so long. 

We are a nation in the grip of an abusive relationship.

For the friends and family of the abused, there is confusion.  There is difficulty in understanding how the one loved one could fall into such a trap.  There is shock at the vehement anger and resentment – often directed at the friends and family – seemingly arising out of nowhere.  There is bewilderment at perhaps having really never known this person at all.  And then there is the questioning of self, of our own sanity, the predictable last refuge in the face of something so irrational and unexpected; and eventually, we settle into a new normal of emotional trauma and lurking anxiety.

Many of us have been in that new normal for nearly two years.

And Helsinki was that uncomfortable, dreaded holiday visit, where the shouting and abusive language were finally on full display for everyone to see.  As our press and public servants were attacked on foreign soil, and our allies assailed as foes, we were forced to watch as our demagogue sided with an attacker against us, and much of our country recoiled in disbelief.  Obsequious and sycophantic mouthpieces now perform the poor and chronically insufficient job of hair and makeup to hide the bruises.  Approval ratings reveal party loyalists falling into line in numbers generally reserved for tin-pot regimes, with their pouting lips and military parades.  Disbelieving and incredulous we are watching as the victim furtively inches closer to the abuser, arms clutched, surely comprehending, somewhere deep down, the growing danger and futility of the situation.  As we glance around the room, most stare at the floor in uncomfortable silence, and some giggle and grin at one another, while a lonely few stand in horror, coldly defiant, certain of what is to follow, building their resolve. 

We are no longer the collection of exceptional people we so loudly and so often proclaim.

We must call this abuse what it is.  Having endured years of concocted outrage amidst growing socioeconomic stability and expansion, the craven refusal of so many of our citizens and their representatives to acknowledge what is certain to be judged the most unprepared, malign, and dishonorable dereliction of our nation’s highest and most solemn responsibility, in full view, rightly leads us to question whether, for them, there is still any line to be crossed. Viewed in the context of history, that question is terrifying to contemplate. 

So, history thus presents us with two options: one or both – victim and abuser – will pay a terrible price.  We have witnessed nations travel this road in the past.  Opening our eyes and changing course before it is too late can mend the broken bones and heal the bruises and strained relationships; closing our eyes and hoping against all evidence only causes further and more lasting damage, some of which can never be undone. 

W.H. Auden wrote, “Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our table… It is the Evil that is helpless like a lover and has to pick a quarrel and succeeds, and both are openly destroyed before our eyes.”  We know how it ends.  It ends in the predictable collapse of this house of cards built on nothing more than boasting and bluster, on hatred and spite.  It ends in a wreck of farcical promises, quixotic expectations, and bizarre childish eruptions.  It is a wound entirely self-inflicted.

Victims of abuse often withdraw and push everyone else away, leaving them alone with (and more vulnerable to) their attackers.  As our country sheds its friends and enjoins its adversaries, many take comfort that time will shed us of this abusive demagogue, if nothing else; that is inevitable.  But at what cost?  It is a sad spectacle of smashed friendships, shattered potential, and a fractured nation.