… people have agency, a degree of self-awareness, and some sort of sense of responsibility--whether that is simply to themselves, or it includes others, is entirely dependent upon entertaining the idea that most Americans are some sort of Christian or humanist, and that those terms have any sort of meaning whatsoever.
It's not quite pathos versus solipsism, but my American cynicism won't let go of the how and why. So, let's start with a Boomer joke, because it's their fault. The grumpy old men of yesteryear really were right about something: The moral relativism they worried about, that thin edge driving between people and tearing the fabric of society, really was dangerous, but, kind of like pop songs, the danger was something they were raising up in their progeny.
And while it's not really exclusively a Boomer thing, there are actual market forces to account for, and it is undeniable that given such impetus it is possible to habitualize market demands as praxis. It's like watching that Japanese show following young children running errands in the city; when Americans see it, we put on a pretense of mortification, but it's laced through with fascination, and you can, in that American way, discern that some are actually jealous. Once upon a time, for instance, the word "latchkey" suggested a communal, even societal, problem. Our solution was to tell children to do better and be more responsible while the folks are away. By contrast, I wonder how many of our neighbors at Sciforums understand the meaning of the phrase, "
Beavis & Butthead 'fire' episodes".
Still, in 2011, conservatives rolled completely. After all the lawsuits against music and musicians, after all the book and record burnings, after all the complaint about the dangers of movies and music and literature, suddenly, no, there is no way calling people enemies, marking their locations on maps with crosshairs, and threatening "Second Amendment solutions" could possibly have influenced anyone toward actually shooting anybody.
Expectations of integrity are customary and reinforced by example. The contrast I describe presumes a modicum of good faith. To wit, when parents fretted and wrung their hands about music lyrics and such, it was easy enough to presume good faith. Hindsight, and the suggestion that the traditional-values bloc never did figure it out, makes a compelling argument toward accepting that
the cruelty was the point↗.
Several years ago, actor
Wallace Shawn suggested↗:
The fact that the leader of one of our two parties—the party, in fact, that has for many decades represented what was normal, acceptable, and respectable—was not ashamed to reveal his own selfishness, was not ashamed to reveal his own indifference to the suffering of others, was not even ashamed to reveal his own cheerful enjoyment of cruelty … all of this helped people to feel that they no longer needed to be ashamed of those qualities in themselves either. They didn't need to feel bad because they didn't care about other people. Maybe they didn't want to be forbearing toward enemies. Maybe they didn't want to be gentle or kind.
†
There are, in history, any number of discussions in which validity depends entirely on reliability; this is a vital component of good faith. Consider a basic, abstract proposition:
If, then.
While we Americans have a saying that justice delayed is justice denied, it is also true that the integrity of this discussion, a chain of ifs and thens, became the justification of delay. The American historical tale is complicated and maybe even incomprehensible from half a world away, while on the home front, much traditional empowerment has fallen to disrepair, only able to sustain itself on grift and bad faith.
One example is
Roper v. Simmons. Our neighbors abroad probably wouldn't know the backstory, and even American conservatives have long since abandoned their public-square bawl about liberal judicial activism legislating from the bench.
Roper is a 2005 landmark for capital punishment, refusing to execute people who were juveniles at the time of their offense. It's also the last time I recall hearing the liberal judicial activism and legislating from the bench argument at a certain level of discourse, and the Roberts court has pretty much humiliated the old conservative lamentation to death.
But here's the thing about
Roper: SCOTUS didn't pioneer the decision, but in this act of alleged liberal activism
affirmed one of the most conservative courts in the nation. Roper, as such, is the warden, appealing for permission to kill Simmons. Convicted killer Simmons, by contrast, had already won his case against his death sentence, in the Supreme Court of Missouri.
Yes, the case did involve certain abstract, liberal-seeming standards, but traditionalist and conservative outcomes had previously relied on similar comparative considerations; the courts couldn't just arbitrarily throw them out. Of the old and new, we see the
science informing differently↑ than
prevailing superstition↑; it wasn't just changing comparative mores that moved the Court at Jefferson City, but also actual medical science having to do with juvenile brain development.
Of science itself, the ifs and thens tend to be of a more definitive sort than those in historical, legal, and political discourse, but as such, deviation for the sake superstition and aesthetic is even more problematic. Kansas and creationism, for instance. Christians and contraception. To deviate from the reliable results of science in order to redefine words to suit the aesthetic fancies of political behavior would pretty much defeat the purpose of science.
It wasn't just abortion, but the Pill and IUDs. If we willing to medically redefine conception in order to accommodate them, there is also the question of what it means if we do. Much like it's not just about creationism, but whether we are to concede the unreliability of chemistry and physics.
†
A short form: It's about
empowerment, but they can't tell the difference. Whether the Lord punishes to the fourth and fifth generations, or maybe it's just that cruelty begets cruelty, one of the driving factors is a particular self-orientation:
「[That] is not wrong because it's also what I want.」
It's a basic temptation, and evident. Here are some times when it will wreck lives: Judges, lawyers, police officers, bankers, doctors, pharmacists, company executives, teachers, clergy, psychotherapists, "life coaches", employers.
It's also why the traditional empowerment majority fears minorities so much. That is, sure, it's not precisely pathos versus solipsism, but while the victims of history are supposed to be smart enough to understand that an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind, the reason the cruel cannot countenance the implications of such expectation is that they either cannot or will not recognize the reality that anybody actually could. Kind of like Griffith's
Birth of a Nation juxtaposed with Bradbury's "The Other Foot". They can't imagine the Coloreds, the Women, or the Infidels behaving any differently. If those traditionalists fear such tyranny, it is because that is how they would do it; they project their own ethic onto others, who are already presumed inferior, so the result they foresee can only be terrible, and somehow we've come around to traditionalists demanding the deportation of born Americans for being Christian.
This is as straightforward as it gets: Constraining women for the sake of freedom, for instance, is apparently very, very Christian, but the actual Beatitudes of Christ are excommunicably un-Christian.
†
And when it comes to constraining women, well, it really is that important to some people. People always think that's some sort of sweeping generalization, but it's also a reflection of the core argument. For instance, we take no pleasure in the prospect that our international neighbors might sleep fitfully because of all this, and, sure, yeah, we're very, very sorry about what our fellow Americans are doing, but that doesn't settle the question of what we might say to those people if it happens to be that their American equivalent, that is, people like them, are the reason all this is happening.
i.e., If they ask me to burn a witch, I will refuse,
and so on↗. It is
because we refuse to burn the witches that these people resent, and therefore resist, the
extremely shrill↗ way in which they are being told no, they cannot burn the witches, for the
-nth time.
And for some, just to illustrate, sure, it's one thing if
religious people want to redefine science, but maybe the problem was
religion, because when it comes to redefining science for the sake of feeling good about harming other people, some just don't see it as wrong because it is what they want for themselves.
____________________
Notes:
Shawn, Wallace. "Developments Since My Birth". The New York Review of Books. 27 October 2020. NYBooks.com. 4 March 2025. https://bit.ly/31LMAhV
