Demonocracy

by Jack Xamis, Ph.D.

In times of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
                                                       –George Orwell.

1. Demon, Demon, Who’s Got the Demon
Ask people to name one of history’s bad guys, and chances are the answer will be "Hitler."

In addition to his many other misfortunes, Hitler had the bad luck to be the first bad guy to do his stuff in the media age. Previous bad guys (Caligula, Attila the Hun, Ivan the Terrible, etc.) got their reputations slowly, through word of mouth, but the reality of Hitler’s atrocities spread quickly, through newspapers, radio, newsreels.

After the war was over, and the scale of Hitler’s atrocities became clear, we elevated him from bad guy to demon, evil incarnate.

Certainly he was one of history’s all-time bad guys. But a demon?

The danger in this kind of knee-jerk, over-the-top condemnation is that it allows us the comfort and convenience of dividing the world into us vs. them, us good guys vs. them bad guys.

We, the good guys, may make mistakes, but goldurnit, we’re trying our best, while they, those demonic bad guys, they’re something else altogether, like, Satan incarnate.

Didn’t somebody once offer a little parable about the mote in your neighbor’s eye vs. the beam in your own eye?

2. Satans Among Us?
I find myself thinking lately about what life in Berlin must have been like in the mid-1930s.

Germany was not only healing the disastrous wounds from World War I but was quickly modernizing itself into a major industrial—and military—power. Think what pride of accomplishment must have suffused the populace. Think how glorious life must have seemed to the hard-working Berliners as they stepped out into their bustling city on fine spring days.

Sure, there was hate in the air, but if you were not in one of the groups toward which the hate was directed it was easy to ignore the hatred, to not think about it, to pretend it didn’t exist.

Even as the hate began to become unavoidably visible, many, perhaps most, Germans simply got on with their lives. As did the rest of the world.

Everybody knew the Jews were fleeing, but who paid attention? Not the churches, certainly not the German government, and perhaps most strangely, not even other governments elsewhere in the world.

Was Hitler a demon then? Well, sure, we say NOW. We just didn’t realize it at the time.

The truth is, he was no demon then, and he’s no demon now. He was a human being, with his own collection of biases and ideas, who through a combination of luck, skill, and circumstance, achieved a place of power where he could inflict those biases and ideas on many people with catastrophic results. His crimes were horrific. But a demon? No.

3. American Crops
Now we have an American government run by people with their own collection of biases and ideas, some of which are extreme. In less stressful times they would most likely not have acted on their more extreme biases and ideas. And if they acted on them, they wouldn’t have found much support.

But circumstances—primarily the events of 9-11—have put those people under duress, in a posture of fear and anger, a place where they begin to dismantle the Bill of Rights, where they attack other nations at will. And where they find massive support throughout the government and the media. And they justify it all as "the defense of freedom."

Are these people demons? No.

Are they new Hitlers? No.

Are they evil? No.

Are they dangerous? Yes. For many reasons, not least because they—and to some degree—many others fall into the easy trap of seeing Hitler and his terrible ilk as monsters, somehow belonging to a different category of humans who are so reprehensible that we view them as non-human.

Certainly, they and we easily believe, our leaders are not in that category of monstrosities, where we, without thinking the matter through, wall off the likes of Hitler and Stalin.

Americans would NEVER do anything like Hitler and Stalin did.

It's a slippery slope this government is now on. Having implemented a series of reactions to 9-11, the United States finds itself in a kind of escalation of responses. At what point will the brakes be applied? The danger comes from the psychological fact that we think all the world's Hitlers are these non-human monsters, to which our own behavior can never bear any meaningful relation.

American leaders can now undertake just about any action and get away with it because 1) they say—and we believe—they’re doing it in defense of freedom, and 2) they are not monsters.

Us vs. them. Good guys vs. bad guys.

How simple the world then becomes: "If you are not with us, you are against us."

Since this is a war on terrorism, and since the terrorists are evildoers, then if you are not with us, you are an evildoer.

How, please, is this behavior, this blanket condemnation of anyone who disagrees, different from Hitler’s own demonization of the Jews?

The present American leader is quick to point out that he only means Osama bin Laden (and well maybe Saddam Hussein, and well maybe Iran…) and his guys are evil, but certainly not all Muslims.

And then here comes Franklin Graham, son of Billy Grahan, THE icon of American Protestant Christianity, announcing on television that Islam is an evil religion.

Where’s the difference from Hitler’s view of the Jews?

Is Franklin Graham a demon? No.

Is Franklin Graham evil? No.

George W. Bush? No.

But where does the name-calling stop, and where do the escalating reactions against the condemend slow?

4. Demonocracy.
A very, very small percentage of human beings are so lacking in compassion that we call them sociopaths. Their indifferent, sometimes murderous behavior is as baffling as it is appalling. And no doubt in the course of history some sociopaths have risen to positions of leadership and have been able to inflict enormous suffering.

Such anomalies are rare.

Most of the time, the panoply of political and military behavior that we observe and, if we get in the way, experience first-hand is the behavior of people in leadership positions who believe that they are doing their best under the difficult circumstances life has put them in.

Did Hitler get up every morning thinking, "Let me see. What wonderfully evil things can I accomplish today?" Of course not.

Do our present alleged monsters get up and ask themselves that question? Of course not.

And you can bet the present president prides himself on his daily activities as those of a man making the world safe for democracy.

No matter that his attorney general is slowly dismantling the Bill of Rights. No matter that his Secretary of Defense leads massive invasions of countries which have not attacked the United States. No matter that his Secretary of the Interior is destroying 30 years of laws protecting the environment. No matter that this is all done with the hearty approval of a Congress and judiciary controlled by his party.

Evil monsters? No.

As serious a threat to world peace and American democracy as any of those earlier well-intentioned but severely misguided leaders of the 20th century? Just possibly. Not yet, but eventually.

What should we call a government that sees the mote in other eyes but not the beam in its own eye, a government that sees all who disagree with it as not just enemies but as evil? How about: "demonocracy." A government that sees evil everywhere but fails to see that in the long run it is its own worst enemy.

The prediction is an old one—that if fascism ever comes to America it will do so wrapped in the flag, riding on a beautiful white horse and singing the praises of the "American way of life."

We may be decades past the year that Orwell chose to use as the name of his novel, but it would seem that 1984 is very much with us in this administration which uses words to mean precisely whatever it wants them to mean:

                         Always there will be the intoxication of power…
                         Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of
                         victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy
                         who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future,
                         imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever.
                                                                         --George Orwell, 1984.

Peace is war.

Love is hate.