A Nephew's Request

I had an enjoyable conversation with my nephew, David, the other night. In the midst of talking about other things he mentioned a recent essay I posted here.

He reads all of them and though he doesn’t always agree with them he makes a point to keep up with what I’m thinking about. That makes his uncle enormously grateful.

He has mentioned before that he would like to see more positive pieces and less negative ones. What I wrote about The Handmaid’s Tale was especially dark for him. “Why write about such horrible stuff, Uncle Tim,” he asked. “I never see that side of you when I’m with you. Write about the good stuff,” he said.

I took it to heart.

I have admitted here before that I know I have a streak of cynicism that runs through me at times. I don’t want to be cynical, or negative. And yet, I don’t know how to hold in my feelings of alarm, fear, and often anger at the seemingly endless injustices in our nation.

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, though a merciless journey through human despair and horror, tyranny and religious fanaticism, offers a dire warning to all generations, especially those vulnerable to demigods.

It has been said that if there had been a strong love of and commitment to democracy in Germany, a devotion to equal rights for all, Hitler would have never come to power. Instead, the people clamored for a hero. Having been beaten by the Russians they wanted a dynamic winner. And Hitler delivered. He gave them grand parades and hyped speeches and dramatic symbols of color and power. And once he had them distracted and charmed with promises of prosperity and plenty, he then promoted a deadly ideology of a superior race which viciously attempted to destroy anyone not included.

There is nothing fictional about any of that. It happened. It was real. And people still today find it difficult to believe one man and his gang of monsters could selectively slaughter six million Jews in a genocide Hitler called the Final Solution.

What was that final solution? To rid the nation of people he considered inferior, disgusting, and a threat to his idea of a super race.

Now, that is the dark stuff that David dislikes, and I don’t blame him. Who wants to hear about cruelty, domination, loss of freedom, atrocities, murder, and death? I certainly don’t. As he said to me, we're all going through our own struggles as it is. Do we have to hear only the dark side of things?

And yet, evil exists in the world. It exists in us. We are capable of nearly anything unimaginably cruel and hideous. David, of course, knows this.

But if we lose sight of that, we leave ourselves as individuals, as a people, as a nation, open to just accepting our worst capacities and casually making them normal. We find ways to justify and excuse prejudice, inequality, misogyny, violence, and all sorts of abuse of others as simply necessary actions to remain safe and strong. (Another argument the Germans used for not resisting Hitler)

All of that being said, I made a promise to David that I would write more positive essays. And I fully intend to do that. And I will do that.

I know goodness is all around us, and, is within us. I believe that love is a truly unconquerable force we each one possesses. And that in the end, the world is filled with acts of gentle kindness, and when given a chance, those acts prevail.

In these terrible, chaotic times, David is right: those things need to be remembered, too.

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The Unclad Soul

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