Category Archives: personal views of Roger W. Smith

“in minute particulars”

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He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.

— William Blake, Jerusalem

 

Some train of thought today got me to recall a memory that I haven’t recalled for a long time.

I was thinking about people who are self-righteous about rectifying what they see as wrongs, in general.

Amway, the memory is as follows. I will probably be seen as trying to portray myself in a positive light, as a saintly figure. That’s not my wish or intent. It’s just that a certain action I recall seemed relevant and brought to mind the quote from Blake.

And, I do feel that I have a large capacity for empathy, which I undoubtedly got from my mother And that, along with writers such as Blake, the teachings of Christ in the Bible, mostly gotten by me in Sunday school, had a major influence on what I perceive as right or desirable when I am acting at my best.

It was a very cold winter night during the period when I was newly married. My wife and I were living on a first floor apartment on the East Side. I was walking home from the 86th Street subway station. It was a ten or fifteen minute walk to our apartment.

I passed a sleeping man on the sidewalk of a side street. He was insufficiently protected against the cold. No blanket. I don’t recall what he was wearing.

I went home. My wife and I had a blanket which I valued highly. It was old. My wife had had it for I know not how long. An old, thick brown blanket. Woolen. It always kept us warm.

I hated to part with it, but I thought to myself, that homeless man needs it. Now. I took the blanket back to the spot where he was sleeping, draped it over him, and left. He didn’t stir.

Something else that may have stirred this memory. Late tonight, I wrapped a blanket around my wife, who was sleeping on the couch. It makes me feel good to do this for her.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   February 16, 2022

Racism should be recognized for what it is.

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Re:

Biden is giving most-coveted jobs to those he knows well. That may help Doug Jones get Justice.

By James Hohmann, with Mariana Alfarowatg

The Washington Post

December 9, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/09/daily-202-biden-is-giving-most-coveted-jobs-those-he-knows-well-that-may-help-doug-jones-get-justice/

‘Biden Is Giving the Most Coveted Jobs’ – The Washington Post 12-9-2020

 

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The following are excerpts from the article, with my comments (in BOLDFACE).

Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, wanted to be secretary of agriculture.

“As this country becomes more and more diverse, we’re going to have to stop looking at only certain agencies as those that people like me fit in,” Fudge told Politico last month. “You know, it’s always ‘we want to put the Black person in Labor or HUD.’”

On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden put Fudge at HUD. If confirmed, the congresswoman from Cleveland will replace Ben Carson, who is also Black, as secretary of housing and urban development. …

For USDA, the president-elect picked his good friend Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor who is White and held the same job during all eight years of the Obama administration.

I am reminded, sort of — to be flippant — of a chess game. White and black.

 

The transition team put out word that Fudge was getting the housing job during an hour-and-45-minute virtual meeting that Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris held with the leaders of seven civil rights groups. They had been grumbling in recent days that not enough African Americans are getting high-profile jobs, even though this constituency played a pivotal role in delivering the Democratic nomination. The news that Biden will nominate retired Gen. Lloyd Austin to be the first Black secretary of defense broke on the eve of this scheduled Zoom call.

During the conversation, NAACP President Derrick Johnson told Biden directly that he did not want Vilsack to get Agriculture, sources familiar with the exchange tell my colleague Annie Linskey. Some Black leaders still have hard feelings because of his 2010 firing of Shirley Sherrod, an African American who was Georgia state director of rural development for the department, after Breitbart posted misleading excerpts from a speech that she gave to make them appear racist. The full recording made clear her remarks had been taken out of context and she was offered another federal job.

Within an hour of their session wrapping up, though, the Biden team announced he will nominate Vilsack to lead the Agriculture Department. This was savvy political jujitsu. These staggered rollouts appeared carefully choreographed to blunt criticism.

Attorney general is the highest-profile Cabinet slot left to fill. There is a widespread belief among people close to the selection process that picking Austin and Fudge gives Biden more breathing room to pick a White man for attorney general. Multiple outlets, including NBC and CNN, report that Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) is the leading contender to take over the Justice Department. …

President-Elect Biden needs “permission” to pick a white man for attorney general? Isn’t that racism? Since when did it become copacetic to bar someone for employment or an appointment (or consideration for same) on the account of skin color — or to suggest that this should be a valid reason for doing so?

Let’s say, for purposes of argument, that a black person has been selected as the next president of a university? I weigh in and say: that position has always been held by a white male, and most of the student body is white. I object to a black person being appointed. That’s okay, perfectly fine, for me to think or say?

 

All seven of the Black leaders who met virtually with Biden on Tuesday held a press call afterward to give a readout of their discussion. Al Sharpton said he told Biden that his preference is for a Black attorney general but that he could accept a White candidate “with a proven civil rights background.” This sounded like an implicit endorsement of Jones. “I said the least we could have is someone that has a proven civil rights background,” Sharpton said, “that’s going to handle this heightened racist bigoted atmosphere.” …

What are Al Sharpton’s qualifications to be advising the President-Elect on this matter? Zero. Sharpton has meager qualifications in this regard — in fact, none. He was a college dropout and has little knowledge or experience of anything, other than political activism. He is known as Rev. Sharpton (or Reverend Al) despite the fact that he never attended or graduated from divinity school (he was licensed and ordained a Pentecostal minister as a boy). His Reverend title is an honorific like Colonel Sanders or Colonel Tom Parker.

Sharpton permanently and irretrievably lost any credibility in the Tawana Brawley rape case. A grand jury found “overwhelming evidence” that Brawley (who was sued for defamation, defaulted by not attending the trial, absconded from New York to Virginia, and changed her name) had fabricated her story. Sharpton and two lawyers who also supported Brawley were successfully sued for defamation and were ordered to pay $345,000 in damages, with the jury finding them liable for making defamatory statements about Steven Pagones, an assistant district attorney in Duchess County, New York. Sharpton refused to pay his share of the damages. (It was later paid by a number of black business leaders.) Why is he treated unfailingly with respect as a public figure and authority/pundit?

 

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A final thought. My key point is that it has become acceptable among liberals who regard themselves in the vanguard of public opinion to use race as a metric in making decisions and judgments about people. This is done with no sense or admission that it might be wrong to do so, that it amounts to racism.

I want to make one thing clear. There are certainly public and human issues related to race. Our history of racism and discrimination. The treatment of (and continuing and persistent outrages against) blacks and other minorities. Class and racial prejudice. Persistent inequality in all areas, from economics to social status and educational opportunity. And so on.

Should someone say, or editorialize, that they want to see diversity in Biden’s cabinet (this pertains to representation of women as well as minorities) or that they are glad to see that his cabinet looks or is diverse, I would be (am) all for that. Since (let’s say, as one reason) blacks or women have been traditionally unrepresented in such positions, or their views on issues affecting minorities are important for the President and his administration to hear. It goes without saying that such views, such reasoning, are entirely valid. But it is not valid to say a white male should not be appointed to a cabinet position because of race. Racism should be recognized for what it is, plain and simple; and spoken out against — without fear, hesitation. or qualification — loudly and clearly. It is not okay, period. Liberals have decided that it is okay, and are not ashamed to openly embrace it.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  December 2020

 

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addendum, January 1, 2021

I agree with the point of view of an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal this week:

“The Tyranny of Diversity: Its monomaniacal pursuit undermines other values—true equality among them.”

By Joseph Epstein

The Wall Street Journal

December 30, 2020

Joseph Epstein, ‘The Tyranny of Diversity

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tyranny-of-diversity-11609347729

I stated above:

Should someone say, or editorialize, that they want to see diversity in Biden’s cabinet (this pertains to representation of women as well as minorities) or that they are glad to see that his cabinet looks or is diverse, I would be (am) all for that. Since (let’s say, as one reason) blacks or women have been traditionally unrepresented in such positions, or their views on issues affecting minorities are important for the President and his administration to hear. It goes without saying that such views, such reasoning, are entirely valid. …

I do feel that these views are valid, as a guiding principle or aspirational goal. But, as I think Joseph Epstein would say, I also believe that in choosing appointees for a position, race, ethnicity, or sex should not be the controlling factor, that one wants the best man or woman for the job, period. So, excellence, in my view — however that is judged — should be the controlling or decisive factor.

In saying this, I realize that choosing among candidates can be difficult, and that the President may be thinking, for example, this woman would be a good choice because of sensitivity to women’s issues that (for various reasons) are important in the job; or the fact that a person belongs to a minority group may make him or her particularly sensitive to, aware of, or knowledgeable about issues affecting a minority group or groups. But I think there are dangers and there is ossification of thinking that results from trying to “keep score” by counting how many whites or blacks, males or females, etc. It’s the person and what the person has to offer in terms of qualifications and experience that count, not externals, which are just that.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   December 2020

People are not abstractions.

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Without understanding … without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful

Romans 1:31

 

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Jean hugs Guyger

judge hugs Guyger.jpg

 

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This post concerns the following recent news stories about the conclusion of the trial of Amber Guyger:

“Amber Guyger was hugged by her victim’s brother and a judge, igniting a debate about forgiveness and race”

By Hannah Knowles

The Washington Post

October 3, 2019

Guyger – Washington Post 10-3-2019

 

Amber Guyger’s Judge Gave Her a Bible and a Hug. Did That Cross a Line?

After a high-profile murder trial, Judge Tammy Kemp ignited a debate about the limits of compassion.

By Sarah Mervosh and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

The New York Times

October 4, 2019

Judge_Gives_Officer_Convicted_

 

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On September 6, 2018, off-duty Dallas Police Department patrol officer Amber Guyger entered the Dallas, Texas, apartment of Botham Jean and fatally shot him. Mr. Jean, a 26-year-old black man, was an accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers. Guyger, who is white, was initially only charged with manslaughter. She was later charged with murder.

On October 1, 2019, Guyger was found guilty of murder. On October 2, she was sentenced to ten years in prison.

 

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Absurd — the premise of the news stories; the “issues” they raise. Notwithstanding what the woman did. (I would call it a crime of negligence or stupidity, not premeditated murder. I would not take the position that she should not have been punished. I do not on the face of it feel that her sentence was unfair.)

She regrets it, expressed genuine remorse.

A hug was given (in the courtroom) by the BROTHER of the victim.

What we have here – in the case of critics of the victim’s brother’s and the judge’s demonstrations of compassion (note that the judge did sentence her to 10 years!) — are coldhearted ideologues.

Robespierre would have approved.

This is not a matter of policy or ideology.  It’s a matter of common HUMANITY.

People are not abstractions. They are not things. It’s not a case of, say, some evaluator grading or weighing something inanimate or deciding in which box or category that thing or abstraction belongs. Life is not a game or contest in which an arbitrator or referee decides who deserves to win or lose.

Compassion is never amiss.

Some stonyhearted persons cannot see or practice this. They have, in their makeup, zero sensitivity.

There are plenty of them. Plenty such people in the here and now.

 

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Someone with a head on their shoulders and a heart:

“Some judges seem to be able to turn off their emotions and not see the humanity, but I was never able to do that,” said Jan Breland, a retired judge who heard misdemeanor criminal cases in Austin for 26 years. “These people that come through our courts are human beings, regardless of the things they’ve done. They all have mamas, and they were all little boys and little girls at one time.”

— The New York Times

 

A stonehearted nitpicker with only a faint trace of “humannity” (on life support insofar as concerns blood flow to critical “emotive faculty” organs):

Amanda Frost, a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, said the judge’s decision to hug Ms. Guyger was not too far removed from judges who tell defendants that they regret being forced by the law to hand down a certain sentence or who encourage them to reconsider their paths.

“Impartiality is what matters,” Professor Frost said. “If the judge shows it throughout the trial and then shows some compassion to the defendant afterward, I don’t have a problem with that.”

The Bible, on the other hand, was “questionable,” Professor Frost said. [It wasn’t, by any measure.]

— The New York Times

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   October 2019

 

 

 

 

“expressing outrage” … admirable or to be frowned upon?

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I received an email from a relative last week. It was, on the surface at least, well meaning, but it could also be construed as condescending.

Re your email expressing outrage with Trump and incarcerated kids, at least he caved (although harm already done can’t be undone).

Without crawling under a rock, I try to avoid at least some of this aggravation. …

No doubt your frequent visits to Carnegie Hall and related forays into classical music (not to mention long walks) are therapeutic. You, like me, might try to avoid or at least minimize all the stuff that aggravates.

 

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I replied to my relative as follows.

I am mostly apolitical and have tried over the past couple of years not to be consumed with hatred of Trump.

The news about the incarceration of immigrant kids has really gotten to me, however. I can’t bear to contemplate it.

Also, immigration has long been an issue I have cared about and blogged about.

I won’t change.

You are right that “harm already done can’t be undone.” I read that the administration has said nothing about the children who have already been separated from their parents and that no steps are underway to reunite them.

I feel that this is an egregious violation of human rights that will not be forgotten and can’t be remedied, it seems. I mean the whole anti-immigrant policy, the characterization and treatment of immigrants as vermin, and worst of all, the separation of parents and children.

 

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Some people profess hatred and scorn for Donald Trump and his supporters, the “deplorables.” They are in the liberal vanguard and can be counted upon to support left of center politicians. When those politicians support policies merely for political expediency — such as Hillary Clinton (one of their favorites, arch enemy of the “deplorables”) voting for the Iraq War — they look the other way. Doctrinaire liberalism and political orthodoxy trump independent thinking, which might, they fear, make them appear ideologically “incorrect” and cause them to lose friends or to be looked down upon by them.

These people want nothing to do with the “deplorables” and isolate themselves in mostly white, upper middle class neighborhoods where they won’t have to rub elbows with the proletariat (George Orwell’s proles).

 

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When an outrage is seen such as the Trump administration’s hard line policies towards immigrants — PEOPLE like you and I (and we are descended, like all Americans, from immigrants) — Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson (a conservative) calls it, with dead on accuracy, “state-sponsored cruelty” — my relatives and their liberal friends are strangely silent.

They hate Donald Trump and Trump apologists such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway. They march in parades where placards with a crude caricature of Trump reading “The only asshole is in the White House” are held aloft.

Trump to them represents the antithesis of their enlightened beliefs and values. They are eager to make the distinction manifest — that they are exemplars of values that distinguish the “best people” from ignorant and unrefined people.

But concern for actual people, especially sweaty aliens from the impoverished lower classes arriving in rafts and/or on foot at the Texas border, does not engage their sympathies or excite their imagination. And, while religion may be given lip service, an impassioned appeal to fundamental Christian tenets such as charity also does not move them; it may more often than not be an embarrassment to them and perhaps remind my auditors (heaven forbid) of the religious right.

Hence the advice to me from a relative to not get too worked up over the separation of immigrant children from their parents.

What such people care about is being on the “correct” side of political debates. They are essentially cold-blooded conformists to liberal ideology. Card carrying liberals who can be counted upon for support of ordained policies and positions.

They don’t care all that much about living, breathing, suffering people. The plight of lower class immigrants does not engage them emotionally. Of course, they do care about the welfare of their own families (and the maintenance of their own public institutions and communities), but that’s another matter. As long as they are safe in their suburban enclaves, they are not going to lose that much sleep over a few thousand “losers” and their children locked up in cages.

Caring deeply about man’s inhumanity to certain groups and persons can actually embarrass them. They would prefer that their relatives don’t call attention to themselves by expressing moral outrage, without checking with them first.

A historical parallel comes to mind. Many people felt at the time that abolitionists in their strident denunciations of slavery and insistence on immediate abolition were fanatics who should have restrained themselves. The parallel may not be exact in the present instance, but why am I being advised to “get a grip” on myself and exercise “restraint” when it comes to my distress and anger, indeed horror, over the consequences of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies? This from Trump haters. Haters, but I question the depth and sincerity of their compassion.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  June 2018

the particular matters; quotes from famous authors

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“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”

— William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”

 

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

“To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit — General Knowledges are those Knowledges that Idiots possess.”

— William Blake, Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses

 

“AND many conversèd on these things as they labour’d at the furrow, Saying: ‘It is better to prevent misery than to release from misery; It is better to prevent error than to forgive the criminal. Labour well the Minute Particulars: attend to the Little Ones; And those who are in misery cannot remain so long, If we do but our duty: labour well the teeming Earth.… He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer; For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars, And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power: The Infinite alone resides in Definite and Determinate Identity. Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falsehood continually, On Circumcision, not on Virginity, O Reasoners of Albion!”

— William Blake, “Jerusalem”

 

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”Dear Hugo, you must write to me often as you can, & not delay it, your letters are very dear to me. Did you see my newspaper letter in N Y Times of Sunday Oct 4? About my dear comrade Bloom, is he still out in Pleasant Valley? Does he meet you often? Do you & the fellows meet at Gray’s or any where? O Hugo, I wish I could hear with you the current opera – I saw Devereux in the N Y papers of Monday announced for that night, & I knew in all probability you would be there – tell me how it goes – only don’t run away with that theme & occupy too much of your letter with it – but tell me mainly about all my dear friends, & every little personal item, & what you all do, & say &c.”

— Walt Whitman, letter to Hugo Fritsch, dated Washington, DC, October 8, 1863; from Selected Letters of Walt Whitman

 

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“[I]n these lives of ours, tender little acts do more to bind hearts together than great deeds or heroic words. …”

— Louisa May Alcott, Work: A Story of Experience

 

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“… I particularly liked your manner of explanation when you lowered your voice and spoke quietly of the elements that interest us both, the humane particulars of realization and communication.”

— William Carlos Williams, letter to Kenneth Burke, November 10, 1945

 

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“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnified world in itself.”

— Henry Miller, Plexus (New York: Grove Press, 1965, pg. 53)

 

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“In the ordinary is the extraordinary. In the particular is the universal.”

— Frank Delaney (1942–2017), Irish novelist, journalist and broadcaster; blog post re James Joyce’s Ulysses

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

  December 2015; updated June 2018

thoughts on the uprising in Gaza

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re:

“Palestinians have no choice but to continue the struggle”

By Noura Erakat

Op-Ed

The Washington Post

May 16, 2018

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/05/16/palestinians-have-no-choice-but-to-continue-the-struggle/?utm_term=.1fa9b9694dc7

 

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The following are excerpts from Ms. Erakat’s Op-Ed:

Palestinians have been organizing demonstrations, boycotts, strikes and demonstrations, boycotts, strikes and outright revolts from hostile foreign rule since 1917, when colonial Britain designated Palestine for Jewish settlement. With the stroke of a pen, the great power declared that indigenous Palestinians, 90 percent of Palestine’s population, would not exist as a political community for the sake of establishing a Jewish national home.

Had Jews merely wanted to live in Palestine, this would not have been a problem. In fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians had coexisted for centuries throughout the Middle East. But Zionists sought sovereignty over a land where other people lived. Their ambitions required not only the dispossession and removal of Palestinians in 1948 but also their forced exile, juridical erasure and denial that they ever existed. So, during Israel’s establishment, some 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes to make way for a Jewish majority state. More than 400 Palestinian cities and towns were destroyed or taken over by Jewish Israelis. Forests were planted to cover the ruins and other evidence of the Palestinian presence on the land.

This “nakba,” or catastrophe as Palestinians refer to it, did not end in 1948. Israel has justified its existence on an unequivocal Jewish demographic majority in a place where Muslims and Christians combined had constituted an overwhelming majority. By its own definition, Israel has set up a mutually exclusive equation: Israel exists if Palestinians do not; Palestinians exist if Israel does not.

Rather than challenge this zero-sum equation of human existence, the United States has provided Israel with diplomatic cover and bottomless military aid. Israel continues to systematically dispossess Palestinians. It continues to steal Palestinian land for illegal settlements while destroying Palestinian homes and evicting families. Israel also continues to deny Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homeland just because they are not Jewish.

This is why Palestinians have been resisting for more than seven decades: They are fighting to remain on their lands with dignity. They have valiantly resisted their colonial erasure. They have succeeded in inscribing their peoplehood in international law and the global consciousness. Despite Israel’s best efforts, they have remained on the land and are not going anywhere. …

Palestinians have endured tremendous suffering and hardship, but there is no choice but to continue in struggle. Israel and the Trump administration are trying to make permanent the exclusivist regime that they have imposed upon Palestinians — one based on racial and religious supremacy: apartheid. But Palestinians, even in this devastating moment, are paving paths of resistance to new and possible futures where freedom is not a mutually exclusive privilege but a natural human condition that can be enjoyed and embodied by all.

 

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Comments by Roger W. Smith (submitted to The Washington Post):

“This is a brilliant op-ed piece that makes its points clearly and forcefully. It presents the issues with stark clarity and is educational for someone like myself, an American who is not Jewish and has not experienced the issues and controversies at close hand. The Israeli polity really is an apartheid system, with the Palestinians second class citizens. The sad thing to me is that I believe a true democracy, notwithstanding that Jews would not be the majority, demographically, would mean Israel would become a better place to live in (not only a more just society) for all.”

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   May 16, 2018

 

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See also my post:

“a better, stronger country?”

a better, stronger country?

a modest Mother’s Day proposal

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To make sure that no one feels left out.

And to build upon what Anna Jarvis started (a bogus holiday with no foundation in our cultural or religious traditions whatsoever).

What about a

Men’s Day?

Women’s Day?

Sons’ Day?

Daughters’ Day?

Children’s Day?

Toddlers’ Day?

Spouses’ Day?

Newlyweds’ Day?

Significant Others’ Day?

Best Friends’ Day?

Coworkers’ Day?

Grandparents’ Day?

Great-Grandparents’ Day?

Grandchildren’s Day?

Uncles’ Day?

Aunts’ Day?

Nephews’ and Nieces’ Day?

Cousins’ Day?

Senior Citizens’ Day?

Departed Loved Ones’ Day?

Ancestors’ Day?

Think of the commercial possibilities!

 

— Roger W. Smith

   May 13, 2018

waiting for …

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“New Yorkers are accustomed to waiting. They wait, usually with Job-like patience, for a long-overdue train to pull into the station. …”

— editorial, New York Times, February 28, 2018

 

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This is typical pomposity and snootiness on the part of the New York Times Editorial Board. “Job-like patience”? A ridiculous allusion meant to impress and which shows a tin ear as well as a lofty disdain for the grubby actualities of city life. And, a lack of knowledge of life as it is actually lived in the City.

Do they ever deign to themselves ride the subways along with common folk?

In their high handedness, they remain oblivious to — or perhaps just don’t want to acknowledge (because they would have less to pontificate about) — the fact that the waiting time for New York subways is incredibly short, with very few exceptions. I know. I grew up in Boston, where one often has to wait 15 or 20 minutes for a subway during peak hours (whereas, during rush hour in New York on the most heavily traveled lines, trains arrive every four to five minutes).

To affect disdain for the subway is fashionable now. No doubt, service improvements can and should be made, and upgrades are necessary. But the subway system transports millions of New Yorkers every day and is an indispensable part of city life. That it works as well as it does is a reason for rejoicing.

Yes, rejoicing. The complainers don’t realize how vital the subway is to the city. Ask riders who rely on it. Most of them can’t afford to live in Manhattan or pay for alternative forms of transportation.

Believe me, the Times editorial writers don’t care about how the little people live or what they think. They’re too busy telling the benighted masses what they think is good for them, when it is actually the opposite.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  February 2018

empathy

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One day we were in the garden. Father stood looking in at the pig. Mother was hanging clothes out, and I was weeding. Two travelling journeymen came past. They were dusty, carried knapsacks on their backs, and looked rather wretched. Seeing the pump near the cottage, they asked for a drink. Mother asked if they would rather not have beer, in which case they could come in. I heard Father say she was not to invite such ruffians in, but Mother answered, “Niels, dear, just think if they were two of our own boys.” Father said nothing, but I could clearly see that he was struck by the reply.

— Carl Nielsen, My Childhood  (translated from the Danish by Reginald Spink; Copenhagen, Hansen, 1952,  pg. 91; originally published in Danish in 1927 as Min Fynske Barndom)

 

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As I would have done (not to pat myself on the back).

As my father or mother would have done.

As our Lord would have done.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   February 2018

vengeance

8 Replies

 

If I whet My glittering sword,
And My hand takes hold on judgment,
I will render vengeance to My enemies,
And repay those who hate Me.

— Deuteronomy 32:41

 

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

— Isaiah 53:3

 

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.

— William Blake, “Jerusalem”

 

A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.

— William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”

 

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This post is about yesterday’s news stories about the sentencing of “monster doctor” Larry Nassar to a term of 40 to 175 years for sexual abuse.

Before I get to my main point – actually, points — I would like to mention some of my deep feelings about human suffering and sympathy.

My mother used to say to me that she had always wished one of her children would become a doctor. She used to say how much she admired our pediatrician, Dr. Cohen, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was the type of caring, humane physician she most admired. He was the type of doctor who was always on call.

I would always say to her, “I couldn’t be a doctor. I can’t stand the sight of blood.” And, indeed, the sight of people or animals suffering, just the thought of it, was something that deeply upset me. Once, I observed boys torturing frogs in a local reservoir with their pocket knives. This greatly upset me. It also struck me that there was no reason for such cruelty, and I couldn’t understand what motivated the boys or why they enjoyed it. I had such feelings about suffering in general, including emotional pain, even minor emotional hurts.

To repeat, I hate to see needless suffering: inflicted upon others; experienced by them.

 

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Yesterday, on January 24, 2018, Dr. Lawrence Nassar was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of from 40 to 175 years by Ingham County (Michigan) Circuit Court judge Rosemarie Aquilina for molesting young girls and women. Larry Nassar, D.O., is a 54-year-old former Michigan State University and USA gymnastics team physician who has also been sentenced (in November 2017) to 60 years in federal court on child pornography charges.

Judge Aquilina, who had opened her courtroom to all the young women victims who wanted to address Dr. Nassar directly, forced him to listen when he pleaded to make it stop.

“It is my honor and privilege to sentence you,” she said yesterday, and noting the length of the sentence, added, “I just signed your death warrant.”

Given an opportunity to address the court before sentencing, Dr. Nassar apologized and, occasionally turning to the young women in the courtroom, said: “Your words these past several days have had a significant effect on myself and have shaken me to my core. I will carry your words with me for the rest of my days.”

Just before sentencing Dr. Nassar, the judge read parts of a letter that he had submitted to the court last week, in which he complained about his treatment in a separate federal child pornography case and wrote that his accusers in this case were seeking news media attention and money. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” he wrote in the letter. There were audible gasps from the gallery when the judge read that line.

Dr. Nassar was accused of molesting girls as young as six, many of them Olympic gymnasts, over a period of many years under the guise of giving them medical treatment. In November, he had pleaded guilty to sexually abusing seven girls.

Judge Aquilina was a fierce advocate for the victims, often praising or consoling them after their statements.

“Imagine feeling like you have no power and no voice,” Aly Raisman, an American gymnast and Olympic gold medal winter, said in court. “Well, you know what, Larry? I have both power and voice, and I am only just beginning to use them. All these brave women have power, and we will use our voices to make sure you get what you deserve: a life of suffering spent replaying the words delivered by this powerful army of survivors.”

 

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I hate to see anyone suffer. And that includes Larry Nassar. I wish he could be given some hope.

I hope I do not appear to be minimizing the horrors of what the girls who were abused by Nasar experienced. Perhaps I am. I don’t know what it was like.

 

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A sad story. Horrible. So what do I think? And why should anyone care what I think?

That I wonder: is anyone completely beyond redemption?

Should the purpose of punishment be to humiliate and make an example of the victim? To make a statement? I think that that is what the judge was doing. The trial has given her the stage, a platform; she is in the spotlight. She is making the most of this opportunity to impose a draconian sentence on Nassar.

Is anyone so horrible that they cannot still be considered part of the human race? Perhaps amenable or susceptible to making amends and reforming themselves? Nassar is clearly a pedophile. The evidence of his guilt is overwhelming. Is there treatment for such persons?

To repeat: I hate to anyone suffer, and that includes the worst of the worst, the most lowly and depraved.

 

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The Nassar trial was like an orchestrated Orwellian “hate,” with the judge the conductor. Public outpourings of hate seem to be common nowadays. Consider the Women’s March 2018.

I was looking at some photos shared with me by an acquaintance who attended the march on January 20, 2018 in Washington, DC. Here’s what I saw:

A woman holding a poster aloft with what appears to be a doctored close up photo of Trump. Two arrows are pointing to Trump’s mouth. Trump’s lips have been altered and colored brown, so that it appears that his mouth is an anus. On the sign, in big letters, “‘THE ONLY SHITHOLE” is written.

A woman with raised fist, a tattooed forearm, half closed eyes, and pursed lips holding a sign that reads “Kicking Ass & Taking Over the World” with a cartoon Rosie the Riveter type flexing her muscles.

A woman holding aloft a sign that reads “the EMPEROR HAS NO TAX RETURNS.” There is a cartoon drawing of a fat man’s midsection. Where his penis would be, a blank piece of paper is covering it up, with only “1040” written on it.

A young woman with a pink knit cap holding aloft a sign that reads “HELL hath No FURY LIKE SEVERAL MILLION PISSED OFF WOMEN” with the female gender symbol.

Two women sitting on a low stone wall (with another woman between them). Both have large signs on their backs. One sign reads: MY SUPER POWER IS THAT I CAN LOOK AT SOMEONE WITH GETTING A BONER.” The other sign reads “I’D CALL HIM A CUNT BUT HE LACKS BOTH DEPTH AND WARMTH.”

Two guys with broad grins standing on top of a stone wall. They are holding aloft a sign that reads “THE ONLY xxxHOLE IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.”

An elderly man with a funny hat and aviator sunglasses, holding aloft a sign reading “TRUMP: Racist. Sexist. Fascist. PSYCHO”

Most of the hate is directed at President Trump, and, by extension, to sexual predators.

Much of it seems crude and uncalled for. And, actually, disrespectful. Yes, I do think public figures deserve some kind of respect. As was true of authority figures and adults when I was growing up.

There is a swell — threatening to become a tsunami — of meanness, and a lack of a modicum of decency, in our culture nowadays, in the public square.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   January 25, 2018

 

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In an up email to close friends on February 28, 2018, I wrote:

I wrote on my blog last month: The Nassar trial was like an orchestrated Orwellian “hate,” with the judge the conductor. Public outpourings of hate seem to be common nowadays.

That’s what I disliked about the trial. I know Nassar was guilty of doing awful things.

To know what such a “hate” is, you have to have read “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

 

Judge Aquilina & Nassar

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina; Larry Nassar