Do you believe in Evil? I capitalize the word because I mean absolute evil — evil as defined by God. I’m an atheist, so I don’t believe in the capitalized version. But there is a lowercase evil, a relative evil. I define it thus: any act that is detrimental to the deepest values I hold.
Now you’re probably thinking, so, this is all about him! Not really. I share the values of a cultural megagroup that encompasses much of the world’s population. It certainly includes most Americans.
Our present federal government is led by what’s been labeled the Fourth Reich. How apropos. The president, his White House lackeys, his Cabinet lackeys, and his Congressional lackeys aren’t true Nazis, but they are wannabe Nazis. They’re trying mightily to create a fascist state and, truth be told, they’re making progress. They are evil.
The culture I belong to objects aplenty. Tweets clog the Internet daily. Irate editorials and letters-to-the-editor abound. Angry panelists assemble on all the networks (except for Fox News, an echo of Goebbels’ propaganda ministry). And people march by the thousands in cities across the country. All to the good, or almost all. It’s the marching that gives me some trouble.
People march whenever there is a sufficiently evil provocation, and of these there is a geyser of Fourth Reich examples: impugning the integrity of our free press; threatening women’s reproductive rights; showing indifference toward sexual abuse; chipping away at LGBTQ rights; threatening to ruin the lives of DACA residents; stoking racial, ethnic, and religious animosity; endorsing unregulated gun ownership; separating children from parents without immigration papers; promoting legislation that denies affordable health care to millions; amending tax law to make the rich richer; turning a blind eye toward inflation control; disrupting free trade for bogus reasons; abandoning pollution regulations and shrugging at climate change; alienating cultural allies; whitewashing the brutality of dictators; using character assassination for political purposes; lying egregiously, until the world gags at the sound of your voice; making credibility a lost virtue.
Any one of these acts is enough to bring on a protest march. The problem is, a particular grievance becomes the theme of the march, and all the other vile acts of the Trump Administration fade out of the news and become a low burble in the background of our lives. We lose the forest for the trees. In my view, all marches should be about one theme: the evil of the Administration. Marchers can carry an assortment of signs, but the media should know the march as a March Against Evil. It would be thrilling to turn on the TV and hear a reporter say, “Here on the streets of Washington, yet another March Against Evil is in full cry!”
I greatly fear that this November we will have only the sound bites of the latest outrage in our ears.
The Scratching Post 