BroadSnark

The Heritage Foundation put out a morning bell yesterday.  The gist of the message is that Obama slighted Reagan by not showing up for the Berlin wall ceremonies and for not mentioning Reagan in his speech.  Reagan is, of course, the savior who freed the world from the communists.

My personal favorite bit is the quote from Nile Gardiner:

Barack Obama simply does not view the world as Reagan did, in terms of good versus evil, as a world divided between the forces of freedom on one side and totalitarianism on the other. For the Obama administration the advancement of human rights and individual liberty on the world stage is a distinctly low priority, as we have seen with its engagement strategy towards the likes of Iran, Burma, Sudan, Venezuela and Russia.

Oh the irony of inferring that Ronald Reagan was a great defender of human rights.  The Reagan administration supported the most oppressive Central American governments in El Salvador and Guatemala.  They illegally sold arms to Iran to raise money for brutal counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua.  They closed their eyes to the massive illegal drug operations of their Contra buddies while incarcerating obscene numbers of American citizens for using the drugs.  And they invaded the tiny island nation of Grenada in flagrant violation of international law.

But I’m not writing this to rag on Reagan.  Too easy.  I want to write about the first part of the quote, the part about Barack Obama not seeing the world in terms of good vs. evil.  I want to write about the damage done by people who insist on dividing the world up like that.

What happens when you try to divide the world into good and evil is that the “good” people can do no wrong and the “bad” people can do no right.  How convenient to be on the hero’s side and never have to face an ethical dilemma.  The hero is good, therefore everything they do is good.  If they lie, cheat, murder, or torture it doesn’t matter.  They are the good guy, so their actions must be good.

And that victim of the lying, cheating, murdering, and torturing?  Well they are the villain.  Everything they do is bad.  If the villain saves a baby from a burning building, that inconvenient information is left out of the narrative or explained away as part of a sinister plot.  And how easy it is to dehumanize the bad guy.  Their guilt is pre-determined.  When someone from a vilified group acts in the way we expect, it confirms all our suspicions.  How easy it is to just throw them away, even a child.

Life is not a cowboy film or a fairy tale.  And we can’t afford to listen to people who have the worldview of a toddler.  Time to grow up.

What is the essential character of humanity?

I thought about that question as I followed an argument recently. The argument was about why the media covered celebrity deaths, but ignored the millions of children who die from hunger every year.

Does the media neglect reporting on hunger because people don’t want to hear it? Or does the media not report on hunger because they avoid subjects that might make their sponsors look bad?

Are we good people being led astray by the powerful? Or are we selfish people just getting what we want?

Both.

And neither.

People are not heartless. More than a quarter of all Americans volunteer in any given year. Charitable giving in the U.S. exceeded $300 billion last year, even with the economic crisis. Millions of us work for nonprofits, prioritizing a meaningful career over one that brings in loads of cash. Everyday people do extraordinary things, like the guy who jumped onto subway tracks to rescue a complete stranger.

So despite the horrible things people do to each other, we can’t claim that people are rotten.

But people are not idiots either. We can’t blame our failings on programming by the more powerful. The idea that we have no agency is insulting. The inference, when someone says that, is that they are smart enough to find out the truth, but other people aren’t. Just because people don’t act the way you think they should does not mean that they are sheep.

So despite the pulpit that some powerful people have, we can’t claim that people are blameless because they are deceived.

There is no essential character of humanity. We are all capable of all things. We can be as peace loving as Gandhi or as violent as Hitler.