Moral Certainty Is Seductive and Terrifying
Being in the absolute right can make people a lot less empathetic
I had a fight over politics with a friend recently, even though we’re technically politically aligned. The dispute was about vaccinations, or specifically, the unvaccinated. At least that was where it started. It ran down all the tedious political checkboxes enumerating the evils of the Republicans and what ought to be done to stop them and came to an abrupt halt at the child concentration camps still active in the American West.
I understand that’s a little polemical and I almost feel guilty for saying it, but if you are among the people for whom the patently evil Trump immigration policy has evolved into the nuanced Biden immigration policy, I’d like to talk to you about moral certainty (and maybe civics).
I always thought of moralizing as specifically a religious conservative endeavor:
God said X is evil
You do X
Therefore you are evil.
Applying evil to the person rather than the act is a fallacious way of thinking and creeping into secular progressive conversations in a way that makes me very uncomfortable.
Being on the wrong side of history or morality shouldn’t impugn a person’s humanity. Trump is a product of the Peace and Love Generation. If you’ll recall, that was the last time the left wielded moral certainty like a weapon.
Mostly, though, I think about my grandparents. I remember how disappointed I was in them when I learned about the Japanese internment camps. I was young and hadn’t yet learned how absolutely powerless most adults feel in the grand scheme of things.
There was an incongruity for me because I couldn’t imagine them letting something so evil and unfair happen. I remember being shocked (like an idiot who believed he lived in the land of the free and the home of the brave) that the people “let” the government get away with that.
I got older. I learned about cowardice and impotence. I learned about insipient fear, interests, and class. Mostly I learned that “the public” was an out-of-control mob that everyone both feared and was a part of.
I don’t know what I’ll tell my own grandkids if they ever ask me why I “let” the government operate a concentration camp for children. “I wrote a mean blog post once” seems so lame.
“I helped flip the House and Senate, but they decided they liked having concentration camps as well, so there was no point worrying about it anymore. Plus there were the anti-vaxxers to own on Twitter by then” is the best answer any progressive can give, as far as I can tell.
We spend an awful lot of time calling other people stupid, recognizing their moral bankruptcy, bemoaning how anyone could be as arrogant as they are mistaken. In my own conspiratorial thinking, I imagine there’s some relief in knowing that there are people out there who are even worse than us.
“I might let children rot in the desert, but you let children rot in the desert and also aren’t vaccinated.”
I don’t see how that helps, or makes us feel better, or is even correct.
We have this bizarre belief that attacking or belittling our ideological enemies online or in-person is the best way to proceed as a country or a culture. As a result, we have family members who don’t talk to one another over something some professional narcissist said. It’s madness. But it’s also easier than evaluating our complicity or admitting how powerless we really are.
What’s difficult as hell is going after the politicians who enrich themselves as we bicker, who detest us beyond their ability to pity.
Sorry this spun into bummer-land, it was going to be light-hearted when I started it. I swear.
If you’re not bummed enough, please check out this week’s essay.
It’s about a scam wherein a bunch of Midwestern people donated millions of dollars to a guy who claimed to be in talks to liquidate all of England’s wealth and return it to its rightful owners. What bothered me about the story wasn’t the scam so much as the public’s reaction to it.
The Iowa legislature was on the verge of making donations to this scam illegal when the people being scammed undertook a letter-writing campaign threatening to unseat any representative who interfered with the guy trying to fleece them. The state dropped the matter.
To be clear, at the onset of the Great Depression, the leaders would rather millions of dollars leave their state than act in the public good. The more things change and wotnot.
Keep the faith,
Tony