Zero to Sixty . . . .

“The will is free, but who can account for his own acts and opinions without invoking influences and accidents?”— Jacques Barzun, “Toward a Fateful Serenity”

One of the benefits of an hour-long commute, really, the only benefit, is the time to think, to free associate, to sum up. In two weeks I will slip into that mysterious age of 60, an age which I have, until now, reserved exclusively for the old, perhaps the infirm, most certainly those far enough from shore that the next wave only lifts them gently in passing before cresting up ahead with a roar. We attach significance to these arbitrary numbers—12, 18, 21, 30, the BIG 50, 60, 65. What do they mean? 

The King James Bible (Psalms 90: 7) gives us one of the most memorable phrasings of our limits with its customary sturdy poeticism:  “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” 

The line begins modestly, ‘days of our years,’ adds the common limit with ‘threescore years and ten’, offers up the exception with ‘fourscore years’ but undercuts the implicit surprise with the burden of ‘labour and sorrow.” Finally, the brutal efficiency of ‘it is soon cut off,’ is turned in mid-air as we strain against the tethers that bind us to the earth, and ‘we fly away.’ There’s nothing of Dylan Thomas’ plea to his dying father, “Do not go gentle into that good night/Old age should burn and rave at close of day/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” It turns out that we were always meant to leave this earth, but the image is almost one of indifference—‘we fly away’ without a backward glance. 

It is not to be thought that I am at this threshold as yet. I’ve been fending off AARP for years, and both my grandparents lived past 90 with a good measure of strength and plenty of cheerfulness. But, as I say, it marks a moment that we invest with meaning. We should not shrug off these moments, for they will not always announce themselves. 

In 2000 Jacques Barzun, one of this epoch’s greatest cultural historians, published his massive work, From Dawn to Decadence, a New York Times bestseller and the capstone to 75 years and over 30 books of a remarkable career. Two years later The Jacques Barzun Reader: Selections from His Works was published, and the first essay, “Toward a Fateful Serenity,” speaks autobiographically of the fault lines and accidents of history that shaped him early on. As a child of wealth, privilege, and genteel upbringing he lived through the chaos of the First World War in Paris, Grenoble, and the south of France. He remembers how temperament, tragedy, and trauma shaped him into the ‘cheerful pessimist’ who, in his eighties, could live serenely despite a culture that exalts selfishness. One of the things that history taught him was ‘the lost faculty of admiration.’ “The past,” he said, “is full of men and women (and children too) whose lives and deeds are worthy of honor, wonder, and gratitude, which I take to be the components of admiration.” 

And I, too, find myself surrounded by those I can admire, argue with, be inspired by, and learn from—from Aristotle to Zola, Annie Lenox to U2, A Bug’s Life to Unforgiven. Barzun recommends reciprocity, a reckoning of the debt we owe to those who have lighted our way. Thus, in gratitude to just some of those whose music has raised me up, here are lines that gave me words for the unwritten scripts I have lived out through the years.

“When you’re down and troubled, and you need a helping hand . . . .” — James Taylor

“Your time has come to shine/All your dreams are on their way . . . .” — Paul Simon

“It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive . . . .” — Bruce Springsteen

“So let us not talk falsely now/The hour is getting late . . . .” — Bob Dylan

“Shower the people you love with love/Show them the way that you feel . . . .” — James Taylor

“In your eyes, the light the heat/In your eyes/I am complete . . . .” — Peter Gabriel

“You may say that I’m a dreamer/But I’m not the only one . . . . John Lennon

“Guide me, O thou great Jehovah/Pilgrim through this barren land . . . .” — William Williams

“You broke the bonds/And you loosed the chains/Carried the cross of my shame/Oh my shame/You know I believe it . . . .” — U2

“The river’s wide, we’ll swim across/We’re starting up a brand new day . . . .” — Sting

“Leave it behind/You got to leave it behind . . . .” — U2

and of course. . . .

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me/When I’m sixty-four?” — The Beatles

Whose Reality Show is This?

“This is the age of contrivance. The artificial has become so commonplace that the natural begins to seem contrived.” — Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America

If the Republican candidates were students in a communications and public speaking course their midterm evaluations—based on their classroom performances—might look something like this . . . 

Sarah Palin — Charming and even flirtatious when she wants to be, but can turn vicious in a heartbeat. Late with her assignments, doesn’t seem to prepare, spurns advice. A dominant figure in any group, she tends to blame others for her mistakes. Still waiting for her to turn in her thesis statement. 

Rick Perry — Another student who waits till the last minute to prepare and then tries to impress by his bluff and bluster. That works for awhile but his lack of preparation quickly comes to light when questioned on his positions. Proud of being a doer rather than a thinker—obviously believes you can’t be both at the same time. 

Michele Bachman — Reacts rather than responds. Talks faster than she thinks. Relays second-hand information picked up from headlines. Sincere, upbeat, dazzling smile, too impatient to study. Does C work because she is constantly distracted. Would rather text than study. 

Herman Cain — Gregarious, ambitious, loves attention, overconfident. Used to getting what he wants, thus cannot handle even the slightest criticism. Comes up with clever phrasing but with little substance to ground it on. Should change his major to advertising or marketing. 

Ron Paul — One of the older students, keeps to himself, something of a loner. Firmly rooted in 19th century cultural values. In a group he sees himself as a spoiler rather than a tie-breaker. Uses every speech to advocate for American isolationism, the gold standard, or against taxes. Pre-med major; says he has no time for gen ed courses like Public Speaking.                                                                 

Newt Gingrich — Not afraid to speak a dissenting viewpoint, but was disastrous as a group leader. Seems to enjoy conflict for its own sake or as a way to gain an edge on someone else. Can be perceptive on certain issues but lets his need for power overrule his better judgment. Alienates the other students who think he’s arrogant. 

Rick Santorum — Knows how to articulate the free-floating fears of his contemporaries. Speaks with certainty on issues, but cannot understand people not like him. Sincere, has deep convictions, regards compromise on certain issues as moral betrayal. His inability to imagine other ways of perceiving the world hampers his ability to lead diverse groups. 

Jon Huntsman — Thoughtful, reflective, quiet, sits in the back of the classroom but pays attention. Often stays after class to discuss something or ask a question. In class discussions he often has the last word because he does not try to shout down the others. Will give his viewpoint if asked, but won’t compete with Gingrich or Santorum for air time. 

Mitt Romney — Class president, comfortable with money and power, looks “presidential.” Speeches are carefully outlined, delivery is standard, phrasing is predictable as are his positions. Ambitious, self-assured, but lacks depth. Out of his element when classroom discussions focus on issues of justice, poverty, or the increasing gap between the very rich and the poor. Envied but not particularly liked.

Of course, any person is more than what you see. But the hidden parts—you might call them ‘character’—are rarely seen in a public figure for two reasons: first, television transmits images, not ideals, and secondly, candidates play roles that they then try to live up to. 

It is not farfetched to imagine that if a candidate were to listen closely to a wide variety of Americans and then to honestly and clearly express his or her personal convictions in response, that such a candidate would be applauded in the media for a fine performance. It would not be at all clear that anyone had actually listened to what was said. 

Measuring Goodness

"I think we can't go around...measuring our goodness by what we don't do.By what we deny ourselves...what we resist and who we exclude.I think we've got to measure goodness...by what we embrace,what we create...and who we include." — from the Easter Sermon, Chocolat

There are two great systems of ethics that most of us live by, often without realizing where they came from or their full outlines. While we may not know exactly why we make our decisions that does not prevent us from making them. But neither can we justify or even explain why we chose them in the first place. 

One system is built around duty, what we ought  to do. According to Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential philosophers of the modern age, we should act out of free will without regard for reward or punishment. What matters is why we do something, and the principle that establishes some action as ethical or not is whether we willed to do it or not. In Kant’s view, the only actions that could be counted as ethical would be the ones that we did because they were the right things to do, not because we wanted to do them or they gave us a warm feeling for having done them. We may, in time, come to enjoy doing what’s right, but that shouldn’t factor in as the reason to do the right thing. 

The other great system emphasizes the consequences of our actions. In the words of John Stuart Mill, the 19th century British philosopher who brought utilitarianism into general use, utility holds that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” By a calculus of goodness, then, we are called to maximize pleasure and minimize pain for the greatest number of people. In short, we try to do the best for as many people as possible. 

These are general theories of ethical action, not a cookbook for whipping up a delightful dish of goodness for the situation at hand. Yet we unconsciously use these throughout our days to handle most of our ethical dilemmas. At times we do what we must, no matter what it might cost us; at other times we try to make the best of the situation for ourselves and those around us. Neither system answers all our questions. Most of us use both of them without feeling that we have to choose one over the other. 

Yet, we usually have a default position, an ethical perspective that we act from almost intuitively. We may, upon reflection, choose another way, but we can learn a lot about ourselves by how we instinctively react to matters that confront us. 

So in the spirit of summing up at the end of the year, here are some ways you can tell which ethical system you most naturally follow. 

You know you’re a Duty person if:

• It makes you grumpy when people pass you when you’re driving the speed limit;
• You finish your chores before you go out to play;
• You toss and turn at night, replaying a faux pas you committed that day; 
• You make sure your car is parked straight within the lines;
• You’d rather embarrass yourself than cause someone else embarrassment by pointing out their mistakes;
• It pains you to leave something undone;
• You find yourself muttering, “What if everyone did that?” several times a day; 
• You pick up trash that other people drop;
• You can think of many reasons why someone did what they did;
• You’re more fascinated with why someone did something than what they actually did; 
• Holidays make you uncomfortable;
• A good day is when you get through your list;
• A bad day is when you don’t even make a list;
• Your besetting sin is self-righteousness;
• Your most annoying trait is being a tight-ass;
• One of your good traits is that you’re reliable;
• One of your best traits is introspection;
• You are an investor.

On the other hand, you know you’re a Utility person if:

• It matters to you if everyone around you is happy;
• You keep working for consensus after everyone else has taken their toys and gone home;
• You’re all about efficiency: effectiveness is for the slow;
• You’re an idea person, not a detail person;
• You get impatient with people who keep asking questions;
• You’ll hire an expert if it will save time;
• You like to be seen as generous;
• You’re comfortable with groups of people; 
• You’d rather have three okay desserts than one fantastic one;
• You think in economic metaphors like ‘the bottom line’ and ‘cost-benefit ratios’;
• Your besetting sin is cutting corners to get what you want;
• Your most annoying trait is blaming others;
• One of your good traits is that you can make decisions quickly;
• One of your best traits is that you’re willing to try new things if it will bring better results;
• You are an entrepreneur. 

For the duty-bound among us, here’s a gentle word for the new year: Don’t let doing things the right way stop you from enjoying the trip. 

And to those who are all about the bottom line: It does matter how you get there because you have to live with what you picked up on the way. 

It’s not too late to begin again.

Wearing the Faces We Keep

“Those who strive to account for a man’s deeds are never more bewildered than when they try to knit them into one whole and to show them under one light, since they commonly contradict each other in so odd a fashion that it seems impossible that they should all come out of the same shop.” — Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

Montaigne, that affable, erudite, bemused observer of human nature—mostly his own—would have found no end of contradictions in our political process. In an essay entitled “On the Inconstancy of Our Actions,” he marvels at the many faces we wear, sometimes on a single day, and wonders why people try to make sense of someone’s actions, especially “seeing that vacillation seems to me to be the most common and blatant defect of our nature.” 

Off he goes in his inimitable fashion, piling on Latin quotes from ancient philosophers and playwrights, and whipping out quips like a ninja’s throwing stars. “It is difficult to pick out more than a dozen men in the whole of Antiquity who groomed their lives to follow an assured and definite course,” he says, “though that is the principle aim of wisdom.” What’s more likely, says Montaigne, is that we “follow the inclinations of our appetite, left and right, up and down, as the winds of occasion bear us along.” 

So we get Herman Cain, a supremely confident man, who wakes up one morning and thinks, “I could be president: let’s do it!” Or Rick Perry, striding like a colossus through the Republic of Texas, glib in his own surroundings, but tongue-tied on the national stage. Who can resist the spectacle of the genteel but thoroughly manufactured fury of Mr. Romney, prodded out of his postage-stamp size comfort zone by the uncivil zaniness of Newt Gingrich, himself newly-resurrected and kissed by the media polls? Gingrich, who leads with his tongue, but has already sold his brain to science, defiantly admitted one of his major personal failings, a capacity to change to fit the context. For a conservative these days that is moral turpitude second only to being ‘progressive.’ Romney wins that honor, having declared himself a moderate Republican a few years ago. How he must regret those careless words about reforming urban schools and providing aid for the elderly! 

A politician these days must display an unbending spine of steel, be deaf to all pleas for fairness, and follow conscience, especially if it leads to money. In these chaotic times, when a reputation can vaporize with a single tweet, politicians decide their positions early and hold to them though the heavens fall. God forbid that they should see an issue in a new light, for that might demand a willingness to compromise. Thus obstinacy and bone-headedness are taken as the virtues of courage and resoluteness. As the Republican primary debates trudge onward it’s clear that only the strongest will survive this Bataan death march of moral recalcitrance. 

Why do we do this? I say ‘we’ because it is we the people who demand leaders who can instantly assess a volatile situation and then ignore their best counsel in order to stay the course. As American troops withdraw from Iraq I wonder if anyone can still believe the reasons why we devastated that country? Why do we want people who cannot deliberate, who will not reconsider, who can only perseverate? Montaigne was not glorifying inconstancy but neither was he denying it. He was allowing for it. That’s not the same as promoting it; it’s the realization of limits and how to work well within them. We want our leaders to be recognizable as leaders from a distance so we create a template for identification purposes. Do this, say that, wave this, kiss that. They have to fit the pattern or they won’t be taken seriously. Lacking any criteria for discernment, humility, and courage—characteristics essential for leadership in any age—we’re left to judge these people by the decibel level of their rhetoric and the cut of their hair. 

At the heart of it is something that is both necessary and elusive—trustworthiness. That is all we really require from a leader. The rest of it can be learned on the job, provided that person has the courage and strength to do so. 

When we communicate with each other, said Aristotle, we look for three things: logos, pathos, and ethos. They can be understood as reasoning, the ability to understand and empathize, and character. These were the things that Aristotle thought would protect us against the professional liars and the demagogues. How quaint they seem now in this viciously trivial political culture. 

“Virtue wants to be pursued for her own sake,” said Montaigne. “If we borrow her mask for some other purpose then she quickly rips it off our faces.”

History and the Scarecrow

“Some things are too clear to be understood. . . . We always have to go back and start from the beginning and make over all the definitions for ourselves again.” — Thomas Merton, Seeds

There is a common view that under the skin we are all alike, that were it not for accidents of birth, language, geography, and culture, we’d probably all be . . . Americans, or at least Western Europeans. On the other hand, Americans are so imbued with the belief that each and every one of us is sui generis, and that we have something of enormous import to bring to the universe which would not arrive in any other way, that we would be shocked to find ourselves considered merely curious in most parts of the world. 

We are constantly trying to make sense of life. It appears to us in many forms: as a ‘darkling plain/Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight/Where ignorant armies clash by night (Arnold),’ or as hope springing eternal or as the marketplace in which fortunes are made and lost in a moment, but no one is sure why or who to blame. And we see the many variations on a theme, some of them irreducibly contradictory, and may come to wonder if we could, any or all of us, ever understand each other. 

So at the end of a semester of teaching a course in Jesus and the Gospels, one that coincidentally I began my teaching career with 30 years ago, I discovered that the Jesus of the Gospels is even less intelligible to me now than he was then. Then I was fresh out of graduate school, brimming with other people’s research and ideas, ready to pass it all along to eager, inquisitive students. The Jesus of history and the Christ of faith were parallel figures to me, but they appeared to converge at only a few points. While Jesus of Nazareth could be placed in the historical stream of events with some certainty I never felt that I understood him. If the Christ of faith, carried in the heart, was more real I had the uncomfortable feeling that it was because he was made in our image—a 20th-century man under the first-century garb. Jesus was a first-century Jew whose short life was spent traversing the countryside of Galilee with occasional trips to Jerusalem. The Christ was an urban dweller, equally at home in Corinth as in Carthage, and fluent in Christian faith-talk. 

Those classes back in the day were exciting as we tried to look with fresh eyes at the Jesus of the Gospels. Reading the Gospels as both scripture and as literature, like miners we worked our way down through the layers of history with some of the tools of modern critical research on the Bible. But while it was illuminating to make the Gospels our primary texts instead of the usual Bible commentaries, it was usually with the assurance that the end of the story was known. The trajectory of the plotline was so familiar that we did not bother to look where it landed. I came away from the years of teaching that class with a sense that I had barely scratched the surface. I knew more of the context, of the historical and critical tools that helped to identify the strata of the texts, but I could sense that there was so much more to be found. 

Then my personal and professional life changed directions and for the next twenty-plus years my teaching was in communication theory, public relations, ethics, and religions of the world. Jesus and I traveled the same routes—not always at the same times however—and I found myself regarding him from a greater distance than before. I tried to place him more clearly within a historical context, a process that sharpened his outlines but made him smaller, like looking through the wrong end of the telescope. But my admiration for him increased, along with the growing conviction that I wouldn’t have understood him more than the disciples, even if I’d spent as much time with him as they did. I wasn’t even sure I could recognize him if he wasn’t surrounded by a crowd. 

Coming back to the course after all these years has been an exhilarating—and humbling—experience. The students have changed drastically—not just that there are new ones to take the place of the former students—but in so many other ways. When I first taught the course in 1981 almost all of the 100 students in two different sections were white and from Seventh-day Adventist backgrounds. This semester there were two white students in a class of 30 and only one was raised an Adventist. Most of the class were Africans and few of them were teenagers. They had come from many different Christian or Muslim communities; some had left families and husbands back in other countries, and they were here to become nurses as quickly as possible. They were dignified, deferential, and quietly stressed with work, studies, children, and bills. They regarded the Synoptic theory with wonder and found the variances between the Gospels as troubling at first and finally, merely interesting. For many of them Jesus was not a mystery but a personal friend. 

But I felt myself gripped this time around by the otherness of Jesus, the numinous quality of that which is alien, even transcendent, while still intensely human. I found myself struggling to put this experience into words. Whereas years ago, still in the heady glow of graduate school, I wanted to set off firecrackers in the classroom and rip away the placid veils of ignorance, now I came as one who knows how little he knows and is grateful to experience that hunger. 

We cannot step outside of history, particularly when it comes to following Jesus. His history is ours by virtue of the fact that he made our history his own. And yet . . . we must not grow too complacent with this God-man who can bless children and throw out money-changers. He traveled easily with prostitutes and counted possible insurgents as his friends. His eyes could fill with tears over the pain of the many, but he could roundly curse the religious authorities to their self-made hells. He knew us through and through and loved us anyway. In the end, he went to his death without heroics. Like a scarecrow against the threatening skies he was an awful sight to see. Most of us ran. Against all odds he transcended death after descending into it like one diving into the wreck. And on the third day, rising, he opened a portal to a parallel dimension. Lest there be any misunderstanding he said he would be with us to the end. Now we see through a glass darkly but one day face to face. 

Black Friday Blues

“In most societies, the very practices of routinized aggression in games, spectacles, and rituals of sacrifice that allow for expressions of anger and hostility also serve to shield people against full confrontation with the role of violence in their midst.” — Sissela Bok, Mayhem

Waiting through the usual previews, recently, before the Feature Presentation, we were treated to an updated version of Warner Bros. Tweety Bird and Sylvester. All rich colors and CGI enhancements, the characters remain the same, locked in an eternal Manichean struggle as predictable as it is violent. The cat was smashed flat, hurled through windows, rolled by a bus, impressed upon a brick wall, jabbed, flipped, bounced, punched, slammed, and wadded up — all to the warbling whine of the bird-as-victim, Tweety. At the end of this spectacle my wife leaned over and whispered, “Is it any wonder why my parents didn’t let me see this stuff?” 

Generations of children through decades of American television cartoons have seen this stuff, however, and new generations continue to thrill to the adventures of cat and bird. Coming on the heels of several stories of Black Friday violence, shoppers running amok, it made me wonder how to put all this into context. The temptation to Make a Pronouncement, Draw an Inference, or otherwise Reason to a Conclusion, reared its head, hoping for a blessing. Reluctantly, I gave in, cautioning myself to keep the salt nearby for a quick intake.

Two recent incidents, similar in the weapon used, bring our casual violence front and center. The first, in which a cop used pepper-spray on a huddled line of students at UC Davis protesting on behalf of Occupy Wall Street, immediately drew the outrage of millions when video of it appeared online. “But they were protesting peacefully,” ran the argument, which suggests that the cops would have been justified in spraying them had they been violent. An unprovoked attack is plainly wrong, especially when the right of peaceful assembly is upheld by Constitution and history. But an unprovoked attack by cops on citizens these days in front of literally hundreds of cameras, any of which can upload almost instantly to the Cyberus in the sky, is folly beyond belief. With the whole world watching, you had to ask yourself, ‘What was that cop thinking?’ It might be that he just snapped, finally having his moment in which all his inchoate rage boiled to the surface. 

But let’s say he’s more disciplined than that. Putting oneself in his position, a couple of reactions come to mind. On the one hand, he did it because they deserved it. After all—damn kids—why aren’t they in class? Snotty kids. Someone’s got to teach them to obey! If he took that position maybe he thought he had the Law on his side, along with all the grownups and adults. But on the other hand, maybe he didn’t think anything about it, that is, he didn’t think what he was doing was harmful or unusual. It was a brush-back, a gesture, a push, a show of force, just to establish who’s in charge here. Nothing personal, just business. If it’s the first option, then he obviously missed the lecture on freedom of speech back in high school. But if it’s the second he’s not going to understand what all the fuss is about. We live in a violent society; casual violence in pursuit of good ends is justified. Restoring the peace is justified: what’s the big deal? 

The second incident that brings our casual violence into sharp relief is the ‘competitive shopping rage’ of a woman at a Wal-Mart in the San Fernando Valley who was making the most of her Black Friday offensive maneuvers. Minutes after the kickoff at 10 pm she had fought her way up the aisle to the Wii display where she took her stand, defending her booty against all attackers by hosing them down with pepper spray. Bystanders in other aisles caught the toxic cloud and were soon choking and tearing up. Not to be deterred, the woman marched off to another part of the store and did it again. The story I read did not say whether she stopped to pay for the items. Nobody apparently took her down nor were police able to get a make on her, presumably because she couldn’t be clearly seen through a veil of tears. 

You have to wonder if she reacted violently because she felt threatened or if she’d planned it all along. The fact that she did it twice might suggest that it wasn’t simply blind rage. I guess we should be glad she didn’t have a gun. How would you like to be the kid who receives these presents on Christmas Day, knowing that his mother literally fought for his right to get what his heart desired? 

There’s no direct line from Tweety Bird and Sylvester to a rogue cop and a customer run amok. These are isolated incidents, brought to light by a media that feeds on them and holds them up as the norm, if only through stultifying repetition and commentary. So I’ll come to a modest and tentative conclusion: Perhaps all this is simply entertainment, examples of life imitating art for an audience easily distracted and looking for the next over-the-top moment. Perhaps we are in the position of the child described by David Denby in his thoughtful Great Books, who “knows that everything in the media is transient, disposable,”  everything is a role that can be changed or tossed, depending on the ratings and our attention span. But perhaps now is the time to put away childish things. 

Shall We Let the Dogs of War Sleep?

Who will tell me

why I was born,

why this monstrosity

called life.— Anna Swir, from Poetry Reading

One of the unintended consequences of globalization is that no one is a bystander to world events anymore. A. C. Grayling, Master of the New College of the Humanities in London, philosopher, and frequent contributor to The Times, notes that “Saying that there are no bystanders any more means that everyone is involved in everything.” In Grayling’s words, running away from our knowledge of atrocities and terrorism “is a refusal to recognise, think through, and try to deal with the sources of that danger.” 

There have been plenty of opportunities to think through the atrocities of the twentieth century, the bloodiest in modern history, and one of them, the Khmer Rouge genocide against the middle class in Cambodia, surfaced this week in a story in the New York Times. A tribunal that is trying leaders of the Khmer Rouge has released one of the defendants, Ieng Thirith, 79, the most powerful woman in that government. Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge government murdered 1.7 million people through “execution, torture, forced labor, starvation and disease.” Ms. Thirith, the former minister for social affairs, was charged with crimes against humanity in “planning, direction, coordination and ordering of widespread purges.” 

But the tribunal has recommended the immediate release of Thirith because she “lacks capacity to understand proceedings against her or to meaningfully participate in her own defense.” She exhibits symptoms of Alzheimer’s, is disoriented and forgetful, and sometimes talks to herself. Occasionally, she snaps in public and rants at the tribunal, proclaiming her innocence and expressing shock that she, the scion of a respectable family, should be hauled up on such outrageous charges as murder and genocide. Apparently, her powers of reasoning allow her to place the blame for murder on her compatriots, while she was only responsible for bureaucratic paper-shuffling. 

Her fellow defendants are, like herself, old people now, but once they were young revolutionaries who joined Pol Pot in turning Cambodia into the killing fields. Pot Pot died in 1998 without coming to trial. Should the international community forgive these people because it was a long time ago and the defendants are weak, powerless people with one foot in the grave? 

It is a mark of moral courage that courts such as the International Criminal Court even exist. The United States is one of three countries worldwide that unsigned itself from the Court during the Bush era, will not participate in any proceedings, and will not allow its citizens to be brought up on charges. No doubt there are varied and complex reasons for this, but it smells bad. 

Since we are all participants and no longer bystanders, the action of the U.N. court in Cambodia raises all sorts of ethical questions. A humane society holds that no matter the culpability of a defendant, that person cannot be tried if he or she cannot understand the charges through mental incompetence. The presumption is that only the sane can be tried because only the sane are responsible for their crimes and for the acknowledgement of them. The banality of evil in people (the phrase is Hannah Arendt’s) means that a person can sign the death warrants of millions and go home to a loving family, a cosy dinner, and a satisfying sleep for a job well done. Thus, Ieng Thirith, no doubt as sane as any government official can be, could participate in genocide but cannot be held accountable for it years later because she has the mental and moral capacity of a squirrel. 

Many of the 20th-century’s war criminals have been indicted while in their golden years but die before a verdict can be reached. Slobodan Milosevic and Augusto Pinochet come to mind, while the early phase of Mubarak’s trial in Egypt was conducted while he was in a hospital bed. No doubt Syria’s Assad, should he ever come to trial for crimes against humanity, will suffer a heart attack. I’m sure it’s all very stressful. On the other hand, rough justice of a sort caught up with Saddam, and Gaddafi, already indicted for war crimes before he met his ignoble end in the midst of an angry mob, might have also stood trial. 

Is it the sheer magnitude of their crimes, that sometimes beggar description, which fill us with revulsion? Is that why they should be brought to justice? What do we gain by sentencing a 70-year old to 134 years in prison? Even if they are executed that doesn’t serve as a deterrent to up and coming young dictators; each one seems to believe that he plays out his drama on a stage sequestered from the world. Can we make up for the loss of thousands of lives, sometimes millions, of victims who will never live out their potential? Can one death redress the hurt of so many of the victims families? 

We know it can’t. But we’re also not willing to let these crimes pass by. Why do we pursue the perpetrators, spending years and sometimes millions of dollars tracking them down, producing witnesses, compiling evidence, and presenting the facts? 

Perhaps it is for two reasons: to honor the memory of those who were humiliated, displaced, tortured and executed, and to remember what it means to be human. Vengeance is God’s but honor remains to us, the living. We must carry on from day to day, fighting the impulse to strike back in like manner, and instead, through a scrupulously fair legal process, show that the poison of evil that pervades the human psyche does not define the human spirit.