The devil inside

This post could have easily been titled "Sympathy for the devil". It was inspired by a recent run of think pieces trying to empathize with the Trump voters, because they have had it rough, and they aren't being racist on purpose.

I can give credit for not being evil on purpose, but I think deliberately evil masterminds are still pretty rare. However, when people are ignorant or greedy enough to downplay qualms - so they have this feeling that something might be kind of bad here but ignore it for whatever self-interested reason - that leads to a lot of horror. I can't give too much credit for that.

I do see value in trying to understand how people get this way. If you want to dismantle that, a base understanding should be helpful. Sympathy for them over sympathy for the people who are being racially profiled, or underpaid, or having their neighborhoods filled with toxins, or having their voting rights illegally stripped in an effort to maintain this abusive status quo, well, that seems misguided, and improperly prioritized.

This post is really more for those who feel guilt coming from both sides. Maybe you are socially conscious, and you try to be aware of your privilege but you have friends and family members who buy into it all. Letting them say it is uncomfortable and arguing with them is awful.

This is your periodic reminder that people can do pretty awful things without being worse than the average person. You have to make peace with that.

I'm going to speak a little more religiously today, starting right in with the Sermon on the Mount:

"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?"

(Matthew 5:46-47)

The publicans were reviled as a class, but even they were civil with family and loving with friends. You do not have to be a great person to do that. Some of that comes from cultural expectations, though natural feelings play a part.

We have bad feelings too, though, and there may be times when it is culturally acceptable to be abusive. Some of our more famous examples come from Vietnam, but one example that stuck with me came from a book, Facing the Enemy by Dean Hughes.

I believe it was part of a series; I was given it as a gift. It followed the adventures of a young Mormon boy in Far West Missouri. This book covered the Haun's Mill Massacre, but he also learns of the Danites - a band of Mormons seeking vengeance on the settlers around them. He helps a woman forced out of her home by Danites, but there is also a part where his mother is nearly raped by non-Mormons who are forcing the Mormons out of the area.

What happens is that she speaks very calmly to the men and tells them that she hopes they will tell their families how brave they were, and they slink off. That wouldn't always work, but in this case it did, and it went along with the discussion she then has with her son, reminding him that they have wives and children that they love.

The men at Haun's Mill who hacked an old man to death with a knife and shot a little boy in the head were human too. They may not have considered Mormons fully human, because they could be murderers there and then go home and plant crops and share meals with their families, but people do that. You can be appalled by it, but it still happens.

I can't tell you whether in any one situation it is worth engaging or not. My brother was here recently and ended many thoughts with "if you keep voting the way you do". We didn't bite because we promised Mom we wouldn't, and hey, he clearly does know how we vote, so we at least don't need to clarify that.

I did call him out once, a different time, to straight out ask if he was calling us stupid, and no, he was not going that far. It might have helped a little. I messaged another guy on Facebook, and he still contradicts my posts, but he has stopped doing so with name-calling. Progress? Enough progress to be worth the effort? I don't know. I just do what feels right at the moment, thinking about things all the time.

But there is one other story that comes to mind. It came from the documentary Slavery By Another Name, which I recommend, but I am only going to link to a short clip here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHUyrcHDbMw

Her great-grandfather killed eleven men because he had been illegally using them as slaves after emancipation, and he didn't want to get into trouble for it. Her family through him told a story of hardened criminals trying to escape so they could have their patriarch not be a mass-murderer.

If she can process that, you can process your uncle telling racist jokes or your cousin voting for Trump. You can see their humanity and know that they are wrong at the same time. Humanity is messy, but it's what we've got.

I still can't tell you how to handle your holiday dinners.