And What Science Can Do About It


 #6

“Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it; Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will”—from The Serenity Prayer, by Reinhold Niebuhr

“Justice didn’t do a thing to heal me.  Forgiveness did.”—Forgiving the Dead Man Walking, by Debbie Morris, raped but not killed by Robert Lee Willie

 This was quoted in the book Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul.  He was the remorseless death row inmate who killed another victim who, though she just enlisted for the military didn’t seem as respectably gutsy as did Morris, who he let go.  As Sister Helen Prejean said, “She said how she related to them and how it, how it was nip and tuck and how she you know was such an active proponent throughout the whole—I said you must be an extraordinary human being that you would have been through this and that you came out whole and unscathed.”

“Blessed are the meek”—Jesus

 

“For example, our [moral] inventory might have unearthed occasions when we stole cookies from our local market.  Upon closer examination, we may realize that the underlying problem was a fear that we wouldn’t have enough to eat.  Fear is often thought to be a lack of faith—we are afraid because we do not trust that our Higher Power will take care of our needs.  Thus, we might determine that a lack of faith, rather than a propensity for theft, is the exact nature of our wrong in this case.”—from Al-Anon’s handbook, How Al-Anon Works, for Families & Friends of Alcoholics, so this is how one of the main role-models for modern self-help, says that alkies’ spouses should see some serious consequences of the alcoholism

 

 

 

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hough this might sound extremist, you could see many mainstream teachings that are as absolutist as is the victim-self-blaming of the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression.

       

The above inspirational medallions are from the Hazelden Center, a treatment center for addiction treatment based on the Twelve Step model, one of which says on one side, THAT MY SOUL MAY SOAR,” and on the other, “I SEEK STRENGTH, NOT TO BE GREATER THAN MY BROTHER, BUT TO FIGHT MY GREATEST ENEMY MYSELF.”  The other medallion, with a rose on the front so it must have been designed for women, says on the front “POWERLESS ...BUT NOT HELPLESS,” and on the back “THINGS DO NOT CHANGE WE DO!”  Hazelden has also sells a men’s version of this, which on one side says, “I AM POWERLESS BUT NOT HELPLESS,” and on the other, with a picture of a sailboat, “WE CAN’T CONTROL THE DIRECTION OF THE WIND BUT WE CAN ADJUST OUR SAILS.”  That’s some pretty high victimity, virtually suicidal.  Certainly someone who accepts this attitude wouldn’t be prone to anxiety and foreboding about things outside of themselves causing their problems, and would be more prone to suicide due to seeing their problems as caused by things inside of themselves. 

Pfizer’s DEPRESSIONHELP.COM webpage, had said, “Depression isn’t a sign of weakness or a character flaw.  It’s a real medical condition.  More people suffer from depression than you might think.  Depression strikes people of all ages, backgrounds, and ethnic groups.  Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults.”  Now, the Learning About Depression webpage on this website, says basically the same thing, “If you have depression, this sad mood along with other symptoms can last weeks, months, or even years if not treated.  Depression isn’t a sign of weakness or a character flaw.  It’s a real medical condition, but there are ways to successfully treat depression....  Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults.”

 

When you’ve seen ads and other guides that say things like this, you may have thought, “So how am I supposed to fit in with all this?  I’d think that those who see such ads, guides, about antidepressant treatment, would have questions other than whether that consists of 34,000,000 rather severe medical conditions, or 34,000,000 rather severe character flaws.  Yet we tend to have such faith that the problem is simply inside of the victim.  Obviously a lot of cultural pressures are pushing people in this direction, and one of them has to be Christian forgiveness.  This, as the Bible describes it, is certainly absolutist, and puts hellacious labels on those who don’t forgive adequately.  Not only that, if forgiveness is used as a coping skill in a society with rampant depression, it would pretty much have to be as unconditional as, ‘God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.  Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it; Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; So that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next—Amen.’  Otherwise, how could one remain well-adjusted when faced with what causes the rampant depression?  Moral responsibility might as well not exist.”

 

Hazelden’s catalog for the 2006 holiday season includes a spread of mainly books about addicts in the family, but also one titled How to Make Almost Any Diet Work, so these books are obviously for women.  The first page is headed “HOPE,” with the following quote just under it:

     

Nothing said about whether Marylou’s alkie husband gives her reason to feel hopeful, only that she found something good to think about instead.  This spread also includes The Lois Wilson Story, described as, “Read about the legacy of hope Lois Wilson has provided to millions of families.”  Especially when you consider how Al-Anon’s latest handbook, which stresses a spiritual transcendence of the problems that the alkies cause, completely replaced their old handbook, which says a lot about trying to get them into recovery, it’s pretty clear that this “hope” is an inner peace that family members choose to have despite a situation that, in material terms, is very hopeless.

Sure, every life includes situations where that sort of hope, the coping skills that would result from, “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference,” etc., would be very appropriate.  Yet applying that sort of

 

to those who are married to alkies or any other addicts, really would, quite literally, require a significant amount of, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it.”  And chances are that the ladies’ auxiliaries of Twelve-Step groups, those like Al-Anon and Nar-Anon, must, literally, insist that their members who are in particularly bad trouble, deal with it just like that.  After all, the whole idea of setting up Al-Anon, was for alkies’ wives to learn how they could use the transcendent spirituality of AA to deal with their own problems.  The logic of this transcendence in AA would be that addictive personalities tend to overreact like prima donnas, and/or that if a recovering addict has a legitimate bad mood, this could bring the risk of relapse.  When this transcendence is carried over to addicts’ spouses, though, it could mean only that no matter what’s their reality, including hardship and/or sinfulness ad infinitum, then of course they must deal with it self-reliantly.  Probably any non-exploitive marriage could become good by both spouses uncompromisingly choosing to have all the right attitudes toward it, but that would seem moralistic.  With enough cognitive therapy, not only would there be no such thing as “irecconcilable differences,” especially among those who chose to get married in the first place, but the spouses would feel good that they chose to have enough serenity that they reconciled.  And such groups are naturally among the main role models for self-help of those in trouble, such as those who are diagnosed as codependent, and therefore, must respond to others’ sinfulness by simply taking response-ability for their own welfare.

As Agent Orange’s webpage The Other Women is all about, not only did Bill Wilson have extra-marital affairs, but he treated Lois unfairly in other ways as well.  One of his mistresses inherited some of his money, though Lois was the one who supported him when he was drunk.  Also, Bill himself wrote the chapter of the Big Book “To Wives” though Lois wanted to, but she said, “I have never known why he didn’t want me to write about the wives, and it hurt me at first; but our lives were so full that I didn’t have time to think about it much.”  That certainly sounds like that same sort of hopeful gratitude, in which it doesn’t matter what the addict does, as long as his spouse finds good things in the rest of her life that she’d focus her attention on instead!

Another book in this spread is the pocket-sized daily reader Hope for Today, Al-Anon Conference-Approved Literature, with a nice landscape photo and pressed flower petals on the cover.  The following, from the first month, should give you a good idea of what it defines as hope for alkies’ family members:

       

The reading for January 5 says, “During each Al-Anon meting when our Suggested Welcome is read, I hear, ‘...in Al-Anon we discover that no situation is really hopeless.’...  Then this simple realization traveled the long journey from my head to my heart—no situation is ever hopeless.  Situations don’t lose hope; people do.”

The reading for Jan. 9 begins, “Before Al-Anon I allowed the behaviors of the alcoholics in my life to cause me great unhappiness.  While it was true I was suffering, was my pain really their fault?  Al-Anon has taught me to take responsibility for my own happiness.”

The reading for Jan. 24 begins, “Someone once explained the maintenance of serenity to me like this: Suppose someone asked me to pass him the salt at the dining table.  ‘Sure,’ I’d say while handing it over.  Now suppose someone asked me to pass him my serenity—would I give it up so willingly?  I doubt it.

“However, when I react to alcoholic behavior, that’s exactly what I’m doing.  I lose myself and thereby lose my serenity.  I give it up as automatically as I pass the salt and pepper.”

The reading for Jan. 26 says, “I wondered if my Higher Power was trying to tell me something.  Could my frequent feelings of hurt and anger toward my alcoholic husband be caused by my perceptions?...  After praying, I relaxed.  I heard the message that God was trying to convey through the reflections in the glass: My perceptions were distorted.  My husband possesses so many lovely qualities that are obscured by my view of his disease.  Then I thought of all my good qualities that are obscured by my disease.”

Nothing is said about her having any real disease.  I’d guess that this was in the sense that, as Susan Faludi wrote in Backlash about the whole zeitgeist concerning codependency, “The meaning of ‘addiction’ itself [meaning addiction to painful romantic relationships]—‘the giving of oneself to a desire’—fits nicely the traditional Victorian vision of feminine passivity....   The professional medical journals supported this illness metaphor, defining codependency as ‘a disease of relationships’ in which the individual ‘selects a life partner who is chemically dependent or who is otherwise dysfunctional.’  (The individual they had in mind was almost always a woman; the codependency market was about 85 percent female.  Codependency was even defined in female terms—its original model the alcoholic’s wife.)”

The Hope for Today reading for Jan. 30 begins, “The alcoholic was obsessed with alcohol, and I was obsessed with the alcoholic.  I watched, monitored, controlled, and exercised my need to feel hurt.  I felt self-pity, embarrassment, superiority, resentment, and anger.  All of these took obsessive turns filling my mind and heart.  I wondered why I indulged in these draining behaviors and emotions, which only resulted in further misery for me.”

This reading goes on to describe the writer’s coping skills, such as use of the slogan, “How Important Is It?”  If you respond to your own problem by asking that, and then seeing how trivial you are compared to the whole world, your and your problem would seem unimportant, so you could feel serene.

This writer, then is something like the “injustice collectors” whom that article I described on Page 5, says are having natural emotional reactions to injustices, yet self-help psychology treats them as if they’re amassing injustices as some sort of self-indulgent: self-pity, embarrassment, superiority, resentment, and anger.  Considering that all of these Hope for Today readings are about alkies in the family, she’s not just trumping up claims of victimhood in order to score points.  Maybe this is why many Al-Anon members could muster up enough hope, only one day at a time.

The reading for July 27, by someone with the sort of caretaking needs that could be attributed to codependency, ends, “God has a plan for each of us.  Caretaking robs others of the self-esteem that comes from struggling with and conquering the challenges that God has planned for their lives.  Letting others face the consequences of their actions allows them to learn and grow from their choices.”

This really is glaringly similar to, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it; Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will.”  Sure, caretaking instead of letting others face the consequences of their actions, is exactly the sort of weakness for fun and/or profit that one would associate with ignominiously cunning untermenschen.  Yet to say that God has plans that some people should struggle with and conquer certain problems, really does beg the question: does that mean that just because someone has anything go wrong in his life, even something that results from others’ sinfulness, we should accept that this was God’s will so of course that person should simply deal with it?  In a society with rampant depression, a whole lot of devastation could be attributed to God’s will.

As anyone could see in the victim-self-blaming cognitive distortions of modern Western depression, for those who must struggle with and conquer the challenges, to simply take response-ability for their own welfare, leads to self-blame rather than self-esteem.  We have far less control over what happens to us, than what we choose to do, so it’s far easier for you to seem to do wrong by not taking response-ability for your own welfare well enough, than it is for you to seem to do wrong by breaking whatever moral or ethical rules you believe in.

This is glaringly victim correction as a panacea, since any and every problem is to be dealt with by the victim or potential victim of it, as pragmatically as possible.  All victims would find hope through their own inner peace, admiring nature, etc., and preventing or solving their own problems.  We needn’t fear anyone using any underhanded untermensch tactics such as guilt-based manipulation and attempts to control or caretake for the sinful.

The reading for August 7 includes an idea that’s very characteristic of self-help, that  people’s thoughts and feelings come from their own outlooks, so what one does can’t really change another’s feelings.  “I learned the value of applying the Serenity Prayer to relationships and to my people-pleasing.  If nothing I do or say can make people like or dislike me, then I learned the value of applying the Serenity Prayer to relationships and to my people-pleasing.  If nothing I do or say can make people like or dislike me, then I might as well do what is in my best interest as long as it hurts no one else.”  But where did, “nothing I do or say can make people like or dislike me,” come from?   Sure, the Serenity Prayer says that even if you object to hardship and sinfulness then that’s just your outlook.  Yet only true believers would think that nothing you do or say can make people like or dislike you.

The reading for August 20 refers to having had grown up with alcoholic parents, and therefore presumably becoming codependent, as a disease, “Because of their diseases, my alcoholic father and my mother who grew up in an alcoholic home couldn’t see themselves clearly.”  Does this mean that those who are diagnosed as codependent, lose their own free wills as much as addicts do?  Rather, this follows the usual pattern, where diagnosing someone with a mental illness that would qualify as “sinful” would reduce his personal responsibility, whereas diagnosing someone with an untermensch mental illness would increase his personal responsibility, since he’d seem response-able for how others affect his emotionally and/or physically.

The reading for August 31 says, “I saw my life through my husband’s drinking.  I had heard about Al-Anon, but couldn’t conceive how it could help me.  As long as my husband was still drinking and had no intentions of stopping, how could going to meetings and focusing on myself make a difference in my life?...  After giving the program a real, fair chance by applying it to my life, I had gathered an impressive collection of my own miracles and spiritual awakenings.  This came about by living one day at a time, practicing faith, and working our simple but difficult Steps. Today I am grateful to be alive, strengthened by my ever-growing belief and faith in my Higher Power, the Al-Anon program, and myself.”  The “Thought for the Day” for this day says, “Without Al-Anon I would be on a dead-end road.  Instead, my path is one of belief in the gift of recovery.”

So this is all about going into a Zen state about some very real problems.   Buddhism would probably expect the sinful to practice this mindfulness, as much as Buddhism would expect the victims to.  And, of course, for Al-Anon members to practice “our simple but difficult Steps,” would have to mean that their moral inventories would have to confess the warranted resentment, anger, fear, etc., that they’d feel about the alkies in their lives.  This, after all, would give those who live with alkies, failsafe and unconditional inner peace, serenity.  Yet for the sinful to practice this regarding destructive behavior that doesn’t hurt themselves, wouldn’t constitute self-help.  For the victims to practice this, would.

The reading for September 3 begins, “Recently I reacted to a situation.  I started to get angry—really angry.  I felt like a victim.  Thank goodness for all the meetings I’ve attended and for the slogans and phrases I’ve heard over and over.  I’ve also heard that the word ‘anger’ is just one letter short of ‘danger.’  I knew my anger was leading me in a hazardous direction.

“In remembering this warning, my Al-Anon lessons came back to me and I switched quickly from anger to gratitude.”

This reading ends up concluding, “In a matter of hours, I found myself in a safe place, the place Al-Anon has created within me.  I realized that there was little I could change about the situation.  All I could change was my response to it.  As I continued to work through this, I grew even more aware of the potential danger to be found in anger, in both word and deed.”

The concluding Thought for the Day says, “The value of regular attendance at Al-Anon meetings becomes evident when I least expect it but need it the most.”

This, as usual, is very absolutely overgeneralized.  Nothing is said here about what this situation was, whether the writer overreacted to it, etc.  The only thing that seems to matter is that whoever has the problem needs to deal with it as pragmatically as possible.  The more egregious is what caused the problem, the more that the victim would need (but least expect) to follow the morally-bankrupt approach, “I’m responsible for not letting this bother me, notwithstanding any moral responsibility that anyone else may have for it!”

The reading for September 10 is another that talks about codependency as if it’s an illness similar to addiction.  “While the alcoholic picked up a drink and became drunk on alcohol, I picked up the alcoholic and became drunk on control and approval-seeking.”  This then goes on to tell of how the writer talks with her sponsor to get her “illness” under control.  It really is unlikely that her attempts to get her alcoholic husband to act responsibly, has the same effect on her as would getting drunk, the more that the victims of the problems, are corrected, the more that those with the strongest motivation to solve them are corrected, and that’s very pragmatic.

The reading for September 26 includes another about codependency being an illness, “In Al-Anon, I began by facing the truth about my alcoholic upbringing.  My husband was not the sole cause of our troubles.  I had been denying that my illness, acquired as the daughter of an alcoholic, was deeply affecting our marriage.”

The reading for September 28 includes, “From these individuals I learned sponsors are Al-Anon members who work with another member on a one-to-one basis to explain the program’s tools and encourage their use.  Sponsors respond to the needs of the sponsee in a loving and constructive manner.  They listen to the situations presented by the sponsee, and if they have lived through similar experiences, they share how the Al-Anon principles helped them cope.  Even if they have not gone through something similar, they can help the sponsee apply the Steps to the problem.  I also heard that receiving a sponsor’s support during a difficult situation can magnify whatever help the group has offered.”

Sure, when the members of Twelve-Step groups for addicts call their sponsors, this is likely because the sponsees want help overcoming temptations to relapse.  When members of the ladies’ auxiliaries of Twelve-Step groups call their sponsors, this is to get advice that would help them cope, apply the Steps to their problems, etc.

The same would apply to the interactions between sponsor and sponsee, described in the reading for September 10.  Here we have the usual absolutist overgeneralization.  These experiences problems and situations with which they must cope, are very likely to be problems that members’ actively alcoholic husbands had caused.  Yet the victims are to react be trying to cure their own supposed “illness,” which consists of attempts to get control over someone causing very real problems, and approval-seeking.

This approach would strongly condemn the pre-Reagan conception of mental health, that one’s feelings be proportional to what happened.  Teaching that perspective to alkies’ family members, couldn’t really be called the most “loving and constructive” approach.  Their feelings that would be proportional to how the alkies affect them, would probably be very unserene and uncourageous, and, therefore, could be labeled as self-defeating.

The reading for October 1 tells of the benefits of listening at Al-Anon meetings, “By listening at an Al-Anon meeting, however, I do more than learn.  I may borrow experience, strength, and hope from fellow members, but I also lend my own dash of detachment, acceptance, and understanding.  I join with others in forging the bond of unity that helps us heal.  I strive to contribute to the unconditional acceptance that invites our Higher Power to join us.”

Sure, in some cases, this would mean detaching from, accepting, understanding, and healing from, past traumas from growing up with alcoholic parents, so this wouldn’t be morally bankrupt.  Yet in many cases, the healing would be along the lines of, “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference,” even when that means “the unconditional acceptance” of, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it.”  That would help one heal from the effects of current hardship and/or sinfulness, far more than would making sure that his reactions are proportional to what happened.

The reading for November 3 begins, “When I first came to Al-Anon, I wanted the ‘priceless gift of serenity,’ but I was convinced it couldn’t exist.  There were just too many balls to juggle, too many people’s lives tied to mine.  I couldn’t possibly keep everything in place to make everyone happy.

“Al-Anon taught me that I was right to think I can’t control all of those outside forces.  The program also taught me that manipulating people and events to my liking is not the path to serenity.  Serenity is a matter of inner stability.  If I keep the focus on myself and let my Higher Power take care of the rest, everything seems to work out for the best.  Things outside of myself still seem disordered at times, and people still act in ways I believe are destructive and harmful.  However, Al-Anon gives me the tools to keep myself on course, so I can maintain my serenity no matter what winds are blowing or which waves are washing over me.”

Since this is written for Al-Anon, it would have to include plenty of situations in which the disorder destruction and harmfulness comes from an alkie in the immediate family.  Even in situations like this, either the victims look at them in morally bankrupt terms, or they’d seem to be manipulating people and events to their liking, manipulatively expecting this sinful world to be as they’d have it.  Sure, everything would seem to work out for the best, if everything, no matter how heinous, seems to be God’s will.

The reading for November 9 includes, “Step Four helped me set aside what others had done to me so I could see my own wrongs.  My Fourth Step ‘spoiled’ my resentments.  It’s not that I no longer have them.  Rather, I can no longer harbor resentment and remain ignorant of my part in creating it.

“I truly began to change by working through the rest of the Steps, asking God to remove my shortcomings, making amends, continuing to take personal inventory, and asking my Higher Power to direct my thoughts and actions.  These changes gave birth to a new person, the person God intended me to be.  My entire life transformed as a result of taking responsibility for myself, becoming willing to change, and taking the action I needed to recover.  Now I know what I enjoy doing for fun.”

So this is their conception of what “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” means for those who in the past and/or in the present, have suffered the effects of one or more significant others’ alcoholism.  And AA’s Big Book, in the original description of how the addicts are to do a Fourth-Step inventory, says, “Resentment is the ‘number one’ offender.  It destroys more alcoholics than anything else....  If we were to live, we had to be free of anger....  [Fear] somehow touches about every aspect of our lives.  It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it.”  Even the most worldly morality would be extremely aware that for addicts to do searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves, would give far more attention to their übermensch character defects, than their untermensch character defects.  When you consider that addicts’ friends and family members would tend to have far fewer sinful defects of character, and would feel far more warranted resentment anger and fear, their moral inventories would tend even more in the direction of confessing hurt feelings.

Traditional moralists would call this too permissive, that a moral inventory isn’t supposed to lead to, “Now I know what I enjoy doing for fun.”  Yet it should tell you something that intercultural studies have consistently found that depressed people who’ve lived in developed areas outside of the modern West have tended to feel paranoid, but modern Westerners, whether depressed or not, tend to figure that even if someone did “get you,” that would mean only that you lost the battle so you’re a loser.  If someone who’s either been traumatized or is currently being traumatized by an alcoholic friend or family member, takes personal response-ability for his hurt feelings such as resentments, then he’ll be taking personal response-ability for something that’s far less volitional than are his choices to violate any of the moral rules that he believes in.  If the “shortcomings” that one cares about are his own moral shortcomings, he’ll likely feel a lot less guilt than if the shortcomings he cares about are his coming short of winning the battles.

The reading for November 12 is along the lines of that of November 3, “Where does this serenity come from?  It comes from trusting that everything in my life is exactly as it should be.  I feel it when I apply a slogan rather than panic about something.”

If someone would panic about something if it weren’t for a slogan, then that’s obviously far from beings exactly as it should be.  Certainly you could imagine the response that a psychologist would get, if, before the Reagan Era, he told a client, “You’d be productive and self-efficacious if you got your serenity from trusting that everything in your life is exactly as it should be.  You’d feel that when you apply a slogan rather than panic about something.  Panic not only feels bad, but if you’re in a situation where panicking would be what would come naturally, you couldn’t afford to lose focus by panicking.”  Now, imagine the typical response that a psychologist would get, if he told that to a client since the Reagan Era.  You could also probably imagine the response the client would get, if she refused to accept that level of insensitivity and moral bankruptcy.  If she simply lets her feelings come naturally, she’d ultimately seem to be: failing to take responsibility for her own happiness, giving up her serenity as automatically as she passes the salt and pepper, ignoring alkies’ many lovely qualities because of her disease, needing to feel hurt, denying herself the self-esteem that would come from struggling with and conquering the challenges that God had planned for her life, choosing to be on the dead-end road of resentment, choosing to be one letter short of “danger,” playing a part in creating her own resentments, etc.  Sure, such labels probably wouldn’t be put on her from the beginning, but ultimately, either she does deal with her own problem adequately, or she doesn’t.

The reading for December 5 ends, “Were the challenges and losses in my life actually gifts God had chosen carefully for me so that I might grow spiritually?  I knew it to be so, and I felt simultaneously humbled and overwhelmed with gratitude for the nature of my Higher Power’s love for me.”  The Thought for the Day begins, “Mine is a disease of distorted perception.  Higher Power, please help me appreciate...”

Every last person who’s to use this as an affirmation, has had unusually bad experiences caused by one or more alkies in his life, and/or is having them now.  Therefore, one effect of the “disease” in question, is that the ungrateful untermenschen don’t appreciate the spiritual value of the “challenges and losses” that the alkies caused.

The reading for December 8 includes, “On a personal level, this Tradition helps me transform the character defect of resentment into the principle of compassion....  As I release my resentments, I can extend compassion to the alcoholics in my life.  I can love myself enough to love them, too, even though I hate the disease that hurts us both.”  This, therefore, is supposed to be the un-diseased, anti-resentment, perspective.

The reading for December 11 says, “The major form my complaining took was to ask, ‘Why me?’  Why was I afflicted with such mean, drunken parents that I had to learn to protect myself from them?  Why did I get a father who couldn’t hold down a job and provide for our family?  Why couldn’t I have my friends come over without suffering embarrassment?...  I’ll never forget the night I drove home after a meeting when my inner question changed.   Instead of the same lament of ‘Why me?’ this new question ‘Why not me?’ popped into my head.  Why did I think I was so special that I should have escaped the trials of life when no one else was exempt?  I thought of how much worse my life could have been and actually felt grateful for my past.  In that moment, I moved into greater acceptance.  Now, instead of spinning the wheels of blame, I use my energy to learn all that I can in Al-Anon.”

Sure, to treat past experiences with alcoholics as if they’re just “the trials of life,” doesn’t have the moral bankruptcy of treating present experiences with alcoholics like that, since the past really is unchangeable.  Yet this is still distorted in basically the same ways that the moral bankruptcy would distort current questions of moral responsibility.  Though Al Anon’s handbook, How Al-Anon Works, for Families & Friends of Alcoholics, says near the beginning, “We may consider [the problems that the alcoholics we live with, cause us] merely the vicissitudes of life, struggles that everyone has to deal with,” minimizing past ordeals caused by others’ alcoholism could be called productive, while minimizing present ordeals caused by others’ alcoholism, that oneself can change, could be called counterproductive.

The reading for December 14 begins, “When I feel my serenity being crowded out by fear and anxiety, I break down the Serenity Prayer in a clear and precise way that cuts through the deluge of my shortcomings.  First, I broaden my acceptance to include everything exactly as it is, not only the things I cannot change.  I look at my entire life through the lens of gratitude, trusting that everything is unfolding exactly as it should.  As my sponsor reminds me, God’s planning and timing are perfect.”

The reading for Christmas begins, “Serenity is...,” and goes on to list what the un-diseased perspective would consider serenity to be.  These include, “a way of life absorbed slowly and practiced one day at a time,” “perspective,” “becoming aware of and accepting my many characteristics and not judging what’s ‘bad’ or ‘good’ but what’s useful to keep and what to release,” “understanding I may be powerless, but I’m not helpless,” and, “a matter of internal stability.”

Yet this list also includes, “balance and relief from black-and-white thinking.”  But it really would be hard to get more black-and-white, than, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” and that’s exactly what “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference,” could very easily mean to those who live with alcoholics.  A way of life absorbed slowly and practiced one day at a time, certainly isn’t the thoughts feelings and opinions that would come naturally.  The pragmatic perspective would have to mean adjusting to the realities that the alkies create.  A perspective that’s oriented toward what’s useful to keep and what to release, is the pragmatic perspective, and when living with an alkie, a serene acceptance of hardship and/or sinfulness could be the only pragmatic option.  To say that someone in a situation like that is powerless but not helpless, is obviously black-and-white thinking, since it says that as long as the powerless person is not completely helpless, then she’s not helpless.  The internal stability and inner peace that alkies’ family members would get from this, is at the expense of their freedom to make up their own minds as to what really is and isn’t acceptable, but such free thought wouldn’t be useful for those in such situations, to keep.  And to say, as the writer of the December 11 reading did, that since the abusive home that one grew up in wasn’t as bad as they get, he should be grateful for it, is certainly black-and-white thinking.  If it seems that serenity is certain things inside of the victims such as perspective, you could bet that when the victims are corrected accordingly, these corrections won’t be in relative shades of gray, such as, “His sinfulness is 50% responsible, while your whiny perspective of it is 50% responsible.”

       

This sort of self-help knows exactly what it’s doing, yet it doesn’t know at all.  Nothing there about hope that the alkies in the families would get sober. Yet I haven’t seen anyone call this, and the self-help philosophy it’s inspired, “extremist laissez faire.”

(The Current stationery and mail-order company, which has an extremely square image, sells these T-shirts.  Though you might think that this looks too trashy for a nice Midwesterner to wear, the stouthearted and perseverant “and deal with it!”, might make up for that.)

The PDF guidebook from the National Women’s Health Resource Center, Managing Your Depression, begins its introduction, “Support Partners is an educational program dedicated to the more than 19 million Americans like you who battle depression—and to the people who care about them,” and begins its Step One section, “What is depression?” with, “Depression is a medical illness with real causes; no one chooses to be depressed.”

It’s highly unlikely that for 19,000,000 Americans to battle depression, is simply among the diseases that are parts of the natural order.  The logic of Al-Anon and the self-help inspired by it, would say that any depression that isn’t just a part of the natural order, was a choice of the victims.  After all, they could have chosen not to let their problems bother them, just as addicts’ spouses are given hope by being coached into not letting the problems that the addicts cause, bother them.  As everyone knows, if you’re mentally healthy, you’ll deal with your realities, physically and emotionally.  If you set any limits to this, then what would you do if you live in a society with rampant depression, and, likely enough, one of the realities with which you must self-reliantly deal, goes beyond these limits?

For example, the Hope for Today reading for March 8 says, “The alcoholic in my life used to arouse my anger and anxiety by criticizing me and breaking plans and promises.  He often created scenes in public and was generally inconsistent and unreliable....  I learned that the word ‘take’ in the phrase ‘to take offense’ meant I had a choice.  Why would I want to take offense and feel hurt and sad?  Wouldn’t I rather take joy and serenity from the tools of the program?”  If that’s a choice of the victim’s, then exogenous depressions (which would include depressions that don’t have external precipitating causes, but do have external underlying causes) would also have to be choices of the victims, other than in situations where choosing serenity would simply take too much self-discipline.

           

Metanoia’s webpage on how suicidality fits the characteristics of post-traumatic stress disorder, includes in its list of characteristics, “The use of self-blame to provide an illusion of control. Sexual assault survivors often blame themselves: ‘If I hadn’t been at that location, worn those clothes, behaved in that way, then it wouldn’t have happened.’ This pattern is also found in the survivors of a completed suicide. ‘If I had only done x, the suicide would not have happened,’ can be used to try to cope with the fear that suicide will happen again in the family—i.e., it is preventable if I just manage things differently. The suicidal are often full of self-blame. As in the other cases it is partly due to an internalization of social attitudes that blame the victim or family, and also due to the effort to gain mastery over the situation. To imagine we could have done more is more tolerable than total helplessness.”  So what this is saying ultimately is that no matter what someone is up against, whether it be a trauma in one’s past, growing up with alcoholic parents, or anything that could drive someone to suicide, the person would end up, at least to some degree, not anxious, but self-blaming about not successfully taking advantage of the opportunities that he hopefully had.

A marquis outside of a local church, said, “THE ONE WHO ANGERS YOU CONTROLS YOU.”  You’d think that preaching at people along these lines would be a good remedy for domestic violence and other crimes of passion.  Tell people that “passive” is the root word of “passion,” and that men who attack their wives are being controlled by them, and this should stop those criminals from being wimpy enough to give in to their own anger.  But, of course, people wouldn’t get preached at like this, because we’re very skeptical and careful about re-engineering sinners.  Only those who are angered and then left steaming, are corrected like this.



 
 

This is the first page of a run-of-the-mill magazine article, in The Toastmaster magazine for January, 2002.  Books, articles, etc., like this all come out of the same mold that makes them absolutist in the end result, since a panacea is a panacea, a person’s reality is his reality, a blank slate is a blank slate, a pragmatic benefit is a pragmatic benefit, an unpragmatic and painful awareness is an unpragmatic and painful awareness, responsibility for one’s own welfare and state of mind is responsibility for one’s own welfare and state of mind, more unpragmatic than what’s unavoidable is more unpragmatic than what’s unavoidable, etc.  The title is “Forgiveness Sets You Free, Ten Guidelines for Ending Resentment,” and it begins in larger italics, “As poet Edwin Markham approached his retirement years, he discovered that the man to whom he had entrusted his financial portfolio had squandered all the money.  Markham’s dream of a comfortable retirement vanished.  He began to brood over the injustice and the loss.  His anger deepened,” so clearly none of these guidelines concern how to distinguish what is forgivable from what isn’t, and don’t even allow for the condition that the damage would have to be past history so caring about it could be called simply a grudge.  These guidelines are: “Educate yourself about forgiveness,” “Spend a few minutes each day cleaning out your thinking,” “Practice on small hurts,” “Challenge the ‘shoulds’ in your thinking [meaning that we shouldn’t expect this sinful world to be as we’d have it, though telling us that we shouldn’t do this, that we should practice our thought reform on small hurts, and that we should do all the rest, somehow aren’t supposed to constitute unnatural “should statements.”],” “Understand that resentment has a high price tag,” “Remember: Lack of forgiveness is giving others power over you,” “Recognize the ripple effect of harboring a grudge,” “Bury the grudge—literally,” “Try instant forgiveness,” and “Recall repeatedly this one vital fact: Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.”  The explanation of this last guideline (or lack thereof) begins, “A former inmate of a Nazi concentration camp was visiting a friend who shared the ordeal with him.  ‘Have you forgiven the Nazis?’ he asked his friend.  ‘Yes.’  ‘Well I haven’t.  I’m still consumed with hatred for them,’ the other man declared.  ‘In that case,’ said his friend gently, ‘they still have you in prison.’.”

The closest thing to a guideline here is the first one, about education, which says that you shouldn’t confuse giving up resentments, with forgetting, excusing, condoning, reconciling, voluntary passivity or voluntary weakness, and that the Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “forgive” as “to give up resentment against or the desire to punish; pardon; to overlook an offense; to cancel a debt.”  Practically every time that victims pragmatically minimize their awareness of what happened, minimize resentment, maximize their responsibility for dealing with their problems as if they’re simply life on life’s terms, etc., they’re not trying to forget, excuse, condone, reconcile..., but the end results are still the sort of permissiveness that those who have addictive personalities would love.

The Merriam Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines “guideline” as “a cord or rope to aid a passer over a difficult point or to permit retracing a course,” a guide to a path, and “an indication or outline of policy or conduct,” but what most of these supposed guidelines indicate is a lack of an outline and a path, a lack of boundaries and limits.  No matter what problems, ad infinitum, become yours, predictably you’re to clean out your own thinking, pray to get rid of your expectations that this sinful world be as you’d have it, understand that resentment has a high price tag because it gives your enemies power over you..., taken to the limits of their illogic, and what you’re to think would be haphazardly determined by what needs to be forgiven.  When, after Pentecostal Reverend Maurice Gordon in Denver offended everyone by putting on his church marquis, “Jews Killed The Lord Jesus” and Gordon apologized, he offended once again when he said that Jews should forgive Germans for the Holocaust.

All of the synonyms that the thesaurus in Microsoft Word gives for “unforgiving” are: revengeful, relentless, shameful, awful, terrible, hurting, avenging, ruthless and cruel, and all the synonyms that the Roget’s Thesaurus gives are: pitiless, unpitying, unpitiful, unsympathetic, unsympathizing, uncompassionate, uncompassioned, merciless, unmerciful, without mercy, ruthless, dog-eat-dog, unfeeling, bowelless, inclement, relentless, inexorable, unyielding, heartless, hard, flinty, harsh, cruel, remorseless, and unremorseful, all of which beg the questions, being unforgiving of what is supposed to have all those depraved characteristics, and just who is the ruthless and cruel, pitiless and remorseless one?  And though that article doesn’t say so explicitly, victims’ response-ability for courageously changing what they can, would be just as totalistically unconditional and as their response-ability for serenely accepting what they can’t, for basically the same pragmatic reasons.  In order to take response-ability for your own welfare absolutely, you should absolutely: educate yourself about response-ability for your own welfare, spend a few minutes each day cleaning out your cowardice, practice on small problems (if you don’t have big problems that have to be taken care of right now), challenge the “I shouldn’t have to do this”s in your thinking, understand that not solving your problems has a high price, remember that letting those problems remain is giving others power over your life, recognize the ripple effect of letting a problem remain which would weaken and hinder you, bury your cowardice—literally, try instant wholehearted acceptance of personal response-ability, and recall repeatedly this one vital fact: solving your problems is a gift you give yourself, ad infinitum. You’re to do would, of course, be haphazardly determined by what needs to be forgiven.  And all the pragmatic reasons for why Markham should serenely accept sinfulness, would also be pragmatic reasons for why he should serenely accept hardship and having to surrender to whatever happens, which would automatically be assumed to be God’s will.

Transsexual woman Calpernia Addams starts out her autobiography Mark 947 by telling of the obviously unreasonable and destructive Bible verses, which Fundament Christians, such as those who preached to her parents, would have to respect.  These include Mark 9:47, “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire” and the similar verses surrounding it, and I Samuel 15:23, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.  Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king,” in connection with Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” along with all the teachings about hellfire.  Addams wrote that these verses show how arbitrary are the Judeo-Christian teachings that would strongly condemn her sex change.  She wrote that one could counter them with the humanitarianism and androgyny of such verses as Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,” but Fundament Christianity would condemn such tolerance as if their own particular variety of spirituality were the absolute truth.

When you consider that in Matthew 5:18, Jesus said, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled,” all the verses from the Old Testament would qualify as Jesus’ opinion, so all of these are also relevant to how trusty “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” really is.  Of course, one can interpret both the Bible and “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world,” figuratively, and can decide when to base his own choices on the humanitarian Bible verses.  As Sister Helen Prejean wrote in The Death of Innocents, “Anyone can flip through the Bible and find words to make a point; it’s called proof texting...,” and one can not only find, but truly believe in, Bible verses where Jesus didn’t take this sinful world as it is.  Yet if the goal is to get rid of one’s own resentments by taking as Jesus did this sinful world, one can’t have different religious beliefs no matter how well he could back them up with morally responsible Bible verses.  Plenty of verses run counter to those described by “Christ’s absurd reversals of true morality would place the good at the mercy of the bad, and would make an end of civilized society,” but since those verses allow mere mortals to hold people morally responsible, they’d go against the transcendent spirituality that Reinhold Niebuhr praised again and again in his The Nature and Destiny of Man.  If this resentment-eradicating spirituality is as absolutist and inarguable as is Fundament Christianity, then the obviously unhealthy Bible verses, especially those along the lines of “blessed are the meek,” would indicate as much about the serene spirituality as they’d indicate about Biblical claims about sexual “abominations.”

Some of this sublime transcendent spirituality could depend on which translation of the Bible one uses, too.  For example, the King James Version of I Corinthians 13:5, says about agape, or unconditional love, that it, “...thinketh no evil.”  The Revised Standard Version, says, “...it is not irritable or resentful.”  The New International Version, says, “...it keeps no record of wrongs.”  The Young’s Literal Translation, says, “...doth not impute evil.”  OK, so being irritable or resentful certainly isn’t a good idea, though maybe the loved one is very annoying or worse, so such feelings would be appropriate.  To say that love “thinketh no evil,” sounds like the Buddhist teaching, “Hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil,” which would very much mean moral bankruptcy.  To say that love keeps no record of wrongs, would be just as absolutely morally bankrupt.  But to say that love doesn’t impute evil, would make plenty of sense.  A lot of damage is done without evil intent, such as recklessly, and to impute evil to that, would be unwarranted irritability or resentment.  Sure, “thinketh no evil,” and “it keeps no record of wrongs,” might make the victims of sinfulness more serene than would, “doth not impute evil,” but that lack of accountability has a price, and those who could see what this price is, aren’t therefore irritable or resentful.

           

Edmund Burke’s statement, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” goes against Gospel commands, since they command mere mortals to forgive evil.  Even if one doesn’t take such commands literally, and acts only in the spirit of them, he’d err on the side of permissiveness.  Until recently, many in the mental health professions didn’t know for certain that pedophiles couldn’t be cured or controlled, or, more importantly, that anyone with a history of pedophilia couldn’t be trusted.  Therefore, if you said that trusting them is “bad,” this would seem to be judgmental, since it would seem to be only your judgment, your opinion.  Even a relative ethos of forgiveness would eschew retribution of people who may or may not have experienced redemption.  If the hierarchy’s intent in enabling the diddlers, wasn’t completely sinless, the hierarchy could be prosecuted under the RICO statutes for running an underground pedophile ring.  Wendy J. Murphy, former sex crimes prosecutor and professor at Boston’s New England School of Law, said, “My pitch from day one was that there had to be a crime [on the part of the hierarchy] because of the monumental nature of the harm,” but a lot of harm can result from accidents and mistakes, and that’s what an overabundance of forgiveness amounts to.

And this doesn’t have to be based on citing Biblical commands, either.  Our culture tends to assume that being peacefully forgiving is what it means not to be a troublemaker.  Chapter 8 of AA’s Big Book, To Wives, says, “Your new courage, good nature and lack of self-consciousness will do wonders for you socially.  The same principle applies in dealing with the children.  Unless they actually need protection from their father, it is best not to take sides in any argument he has with them while drinking.  Use your energies to promote a better understanding all around.  Then that terrible tension which grips the home of every problem drinker will be lessened.”  Demands that alcoholics make of their children would very often be unreasonable, and criticisms that the alcoholics make would very often be verbally abusive, but protecting the kids from the effects that such traumas have on them, probably isn’t what the book means by “protection.”  Promoting a better understanding all around, would be promoting to the kids that they understand their father, just as much as promoting to the father that he understands his kids, and then accepting that the father won’t correct himself like this. For the children not to, wouldn’t be so understandable.

If anything, the reasoning for the forgiveness should tell us why we can’t afford a lot of consequential permissiveness.  After all the logic about forgiveness being a well-adjusted virtue, what’s really the most compelling argument for forgiveness, is that probably the intent of most destructive behavior isn’t as severe as the consequences.  The moral responsibility for a lot of serious consequences, such as that caused by recklessness, is ambiguous.  Yet even when this is unambiguous, the intent couldn’t have been as bad as the consequences.  The permanent consequences of heinous crimes are continuously horrible, but even “The Worst of the Worst” on Death Row aren’t continuously horrible.

The Angolite prison magazine quoted Louisiana prosecutor Henry C. Brown as saying, “I was talking to a state representative from Shreveport not long ago and I was telling him that I didn’t think you should put people who are prosecutors in categories of liberal or conservative, because I didn’t think there was any category when it came to crime.  I don’t think that a Democrat or Republican wanted to be a victim of crime.”  One could equally say, “I don’t think that a Democrat or Republican wanted to be a victim of the sort of trauma that leads to our unusually high rates of depression and anxiety disorders.”  Yet it seems that the more that you forgive that, as long as it wasn’t criminal, particularly violent, the more that you’re a “real American.”  “Real Americans” would be expected to understand that just because they intensely don’t want something to happen to them, doesn’t mean that the person who does it is inherently diabolical.

Devout Catholic Flannery O’Connor wrote, “In the absence of faith, we govern by tenderness, and tenderness leads to the gas chamber,” but a Catholic publication that both humanizes death-row inmates and gives scholarships to murdered victims’ family members is called Compassion, so compassion could go to both the hurt, and those who must pay a big price for something they’re now absolutely helpless to change.  One result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Law of Entropy, is that destruction is all too easy, so the consequences of destructive behavior are probably worse than the intent.  So in order to protect us from rampant depression, anxiety, and the like, we’re going to have to be reluctant to excuse that behavior.

Yet, BTW, tenderness without faith could also lead to turning perv-priests in to the cops, going against a papal document said that one could get excommunicated for telling others about any priests’ “solicitations” including of youth, “is to observe the strictest secret, which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office, in all matters and with all persons, under the penalty of excommunication...  nor [will I ever], directly or indirectly, by means of a nod, or of a word, by writing, or in any other way and under whatever type of pretext, even for the most urgent and most serious cause [even] for the purpose of a greater good, commit anything against this fidelity to the secret, unless a particular faculty or dispensation has been expressly given to me by the Supreme Pontiff.”

A webpage of the group Opus Bono Sacerdotii, “Work for the Good of the Priesthood,” says that it’s trying to make sure that accused priests are given due process, but also says, “What is usually overlooked in this whole episode is, ‘What happens to the accused priest?’...  Is he treated with justice and charity?”  No one expects that Michael Jackson be entitled to charity.

     

The same webpage says that we should keep in mind Pope John Paul II’s statement,  “At the same time ... we cannot forget the power of Christian conversion, that radical decision to turn away from sin and back to God, which reaches to the depths of a person’s soul and can work extraordinary change,” though if that worked on pedophile priests, the current crisis regarding overly forgiven priests wouldn’t be happening.  Another webpage of Opus Bono Sacerdotii ends, “Always at the forefront of the mission is Divine Mercy which constrains judgment and prescribes unconditional love and forgiveness.”  While that probably isn’t meant literally, even figuratively that could lead to what Jason Berry described as “a massive sexual underground,” which he realized after “reading these depositions from different parts of the country.”  Another webpage includes a letter from a nun, which says, “Like a knight in shining armor, you come to their rescue, lifting them up, standing by them and providing some ray of hope that they are not totally abandoned.  Whether they are innocent, guilty of something a long time ago, or shackled by an evil that humiliates and knocks them down again and again, God’s merciful love is never denied to them.  You are a sign, in a confused and chaotic world, of that steadfast love,” so chronic recidivists are included among those who get the mercy.  David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said, “I think the pattern is that the church doesn’t learn.  If the church didn’t change after each million-dollar verdict or settlement, it’s hard to say what will make a fundamental change in the church.”  If the problem was that real pedophiles kept abusing their due process rights and the Church didn’t learn from this not to trust due process rights, fine.  But that’s not what it keeps failing to learn.  (Not only that, if the Catholic Church requires due process before it fires one of its priests, but other organizations which care for youth have policies in which employees are fired after a few accusations, then if the Catholic Church ends up getting sued more for child molestation, they can’t blame the bigots, the infidels, the hysterical public, the sensationalistic media, the money-grubbing plaintiffs, etc.  And when it comes to which caretakers anyone is allowed to leave a child at the mercy of, New Hampshire law could prosecute someone for child endangerment, even based on a “willful blindness” to a caretaker’s tendency to abuse children.)  And a group called “Opus Bono Sacerdotii” certainly doesn’t fly in the face of authority; this constraint of judgment and prescription of unconditional love and forgiveness, are very much in line with working for the priesthood.

Father James Scahill, in Massachusetts, is speaking out against the Church’s enabling of the perv priests.  In response, Father Bill Pomerleau said, “I think the problem is how he tends to go about these things.  Your job as a priest is to feel and reflect people’s pain, but at times you have to lead them to go beyond that.  I don’t know if Jim has been able to do that yet.”  Pomerleau also said that Scahill’s protests put him “out there on a limb” relative to the powers-that-be.  If they’ve got the power, then they’ve got the power, and that’s reality.  But what’s considerably subtler than that, is what it means to “lead them to go beyond that.”  It means leading them not to care, since forgiveness always heals the forgivers.  As Lewis Smedes wrote in his 1986 book Forgive and Forget, in a section called “Forgiving Monsters,” “If we say monsters are beyond forgiving, we give them a power they should never have.  Monsters who are too evil to be forgiven get a stranglehold on their victims; they can sentence their victims to a lifetime of unhealed pain.  If they are unforgivable monsters, they are given power to keep their evil alive in the hearts of those who suffered most.”  The forgivers must be led to this forgiveness, since agápè-style unconditional forgiveness doesn’t come naturally.  There’s nothing relative here, such as making sure that parishioners don’t overreact.  This is simply absolute.  They’d simply go beyond the pain.

This sort of minimization and magnification on the part of psychologists, overabundant Christian forgiveness, and juvenile addictive personalities, could easily interface with each other.  Let’s also take the case of perv priest Father Densmore of the Manchester, New Hampshire, Diocese.  The homepage of Bishop Accountability begins its explanatory text with, “WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘ACCOUNTABILITY’?  It is a matter of public record that U.S. bishops have knowingly transferred thousands of abusive priests into unsuspecting parishes and dioceses, placing fear of ‘scandal’ ahead of the welfare of children,” but this playing musical chairs with perv priests only increases the scandal.  You wouldn’t see the Boy Scouts transferring its perv troop leaders to new troops as if this would reduce the organization’s risk.  But a Christian church, especially one unusually likely to try to re-engineer human nature, is very likely to prioritize the Virtue of Forgiveness, and to have a very overgeneralized fatalism about sinfulness.

A lot of the papers about Densmore in his files, came from the Saint Luke Institute.  Father Canice Connors, head of this Institute, wrote in America magazine in May, 1992, the same week that the Father James Porter pedophilia case suddenly became huge news in Massachusetts, “It would be wise to avoid the exaggeration of the victimologists.  We are not involved with the dynamics of rape but with the far subtler dynamics of persuasion by a friend.  As we speak to and about the victims we must be aware that the child sometimes retains a loving memory of the offender.”  In 1993, a memo of his that was distributed to a Church think-tank on sexual abuse that he co-chaired, compared the social stigma of pedophiles to the stigma of the elderly, the homeless, and AIDS patients, and said, “Is Catholic Church leadership in the United States falling into a similar cultural trap by shunning pedophile priests?”  Sure, it sounds unquestionably horrendous to say that some who were molested think fondly of their offenders.  But treating the pervs as if they might as well be stigmatized innocents, is the sort of forgiveness that has been called “compassion” toward sinners.  Such an anathematization of “victimologists” leads to its own victimology, i.e., the study of how victims should self-reliantly adjust, persevere, forgive, etc., and why they’ll benefit if they do.  That’s a far worse lack of accountability than is placing a fear of “scandal” ahead of moral concerns, since a fear of “scandal” would ultimately motivate people to limit the scandalous behavior.

Unlike the notorious perv priests, Densmore offended only when he was actively alcoholic, and is now glad to leave that part of his life behind him.  Therefore, those who want to encourage positive outlooks and focusing attention toward the future and away from the past, could figure that his victims would benefit both themselves and society, if they forgave him.  Of course the Catholic hierarchy thinks along these lines.  One of his victims wrote to the Manchester diocese, “John Doe XI,” asking only to have the money that he paid for therapy, recompensed.  They told him that he would, if he kept the molestations confidential.  He wrote back, “Having asked me (as a condition of the ‘Agreement and Release’) to ‘keep the nature of any discussions... confidential’, has made quite clear to me your neglect to appreciate what happened to me.”  He also wrote that he’d been keeping this secret for about twenty years, but this was going to stop.  Msgr. Francis J. Christian wrote him back, “Basically, we believe Fr. Densmore has made significant progress in his life as you have in yours.  As you know, he has admitted his problems and sought help for them.  Making those problems public would destroy his ability to contribute further and would affect his problems....  However, going public now with the events about which we have corresponded would not only put you in a compromising position due to the publicity, but would also jeopardize Fr. Densmore’s limited ministry, to no constructive end.”  Christian wrote in a memorandum, “It appears to me that with the appropriate reimbursement for his counseling expenses, as long as he is satisfied with the steps the Diocese has taken, the Diocese and Father Densmore may not be in danger of any civil or criminal liability.  [John Doe XI] is, however, an angry and troubled young man who, in my estimation, might easily be pushed over the edge.”  This was the same Msgr. Christian who, in regards to another priest who had a thing about showing adult homosexual porn to adolescent boys and serve them alcohol, “Roger admitted to me at the time that he had been imprudent in bringing young men into the rectory and allowing them to view pornographic materials as well as partake of alcoholic beverages....  I tried to make it clear to Roger that the Diocese is concerned about both his drinking and his lifestyle problems, both because of our concerns for his personal health as well as for the Church.”

Fr. Densmore’s file also includes a handwritten letter, on Catholic Medical Center stationery, that he wrote to one of his victims after he visited Densmore, saying,  “I think that [seeing his ‘Behavior Log’] will give you a good insight into a lot of what has been bothering you about me, and will also help you to see how addiction to alcohol crippled my life, and how black was my depression for so many years....  I’d really be happy if you could come [to hear him speak at an open AA meeting]—it would give you a picture of what continuing recovery has meant for me.  My therapist thinks that my getting to know you as an adult, and your getting to know me from your own adult perspective, would be good for both of us.  He suggested that I ask you for the favor of seeing me from time to time, and he suggested that maybe we could confer some healing on each other.”  Those who have a productive agápè spirituality, and who’ve been molested by someone who’s changed his evil ways, probably would aim to feel reconciled with him, and would want to see how much he’s changed.  That’s all that Densmore and his therapist were expecting of this victim.

           

Yet one must ask what’s the difference between this, and what the priest counseling molestation survivor J. Michael Woods told him.  The Raleigh News-Observer ran an article saying that when he reached adulthood he spoke with a priest, James J. Behan, about the horrifying experiences, and that he “suggested McSweeney [the molester] and Woods work out their problems — an idea Woods feared would never work.”  Later on, Woods just happened to read that the Philadelphia district attorney had charged Behan with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and indecent assault on a boy two decades ago.  Woods said,  “It made me feel I had been victimized all over again.  No wonder I wasn’t able to overcome it.”  Woods said that Behan never revealed any conflict of interest, but one would have to ask, would expecting a therapeutic reconciliation between victim and victimizer, really require a perv’s conflict of interest?  Densmore’s psychologist, also, thought that this would be therapeutic for Densmore’s victim.  Sure, his visit to Densmore might have given the therapist the impression that this victim would be receptive to therapeutic forgiveness, and Densmore but not Behan obviously stopped sexually abusing.  At the same time, it’s really only one step from expecting this victim to let go of his hurt feelings, to expecting Wood to let go of his hurt feelings.

Of course, one would have to start out asking why Densmore first became addicted to alcohol instead of just getting anti-depressants.  This probably had something to do with the juvenile tendencies which also led to his pedophilia.  One would also have to see that, while Densmore isn’t a dyed-in-the-wool sociopath, both he, and his therapist, clearly neglect to appreciate what happens to people molested in childhood.  Maybe if a guy was an adult who tried to make friends with the drunken Densmore, then disgustedly gave up, it would be good for that guy to spend time with the sober Densmore to see how the old Densmore wasn’t his real self.  Yet to treat molestations like this, greatly neglects to appreciate their magnitude.  But psychologists, forgiving Christians, and juvenile addictive personalities,

                 

                 

 would all tell you that appreciating the magnitude of molestation is very unpragmatic and resentful. 

If, as the devil in Milton’s Paradise Lost said, “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,” then if something bothers you, especially if it happened in the past, you could choose to feel differently by choosing to think differently about it.  Trivialization, minimization, insensitivity, etc., could make you more Stoic, and, therefore, more serene.  This would confer healing on you.  Forgiving and forgetting brings healing, though the expectations that you forget could certainly seem to neglect to appreciate what happened to you.  A mature, adult perspective would let you see things less emotionally.  The law wouldn’t figure that as soon as someone stops his crimes he seems innocent, but when one wants to cope, he can’t afford to be that demanding.  In fact, New Hampshire law defines “compounding” as, “confers, offers, or agrees to confer any benefit on another as consideration for such person refraining from initiating or aiding in a criminal prosecution,” i.e. confidentiality agreements regarding informing the law, and the REPORT ON THE INVESTIGATION OF THE DIOCESE OF MANCHESTER from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office says, “evidence that the Diocese engaged in compounding may have been admissible on charges of Endangerment to show that the Diocese acted purposely and to demonstrate its consciousness of guilt.”  Yet according to forgiving spirituality, there’s a radical difference between consciousness of past guilt and consciousness of present guilt, even if this past is more recent.  (The leader of a heavy metal band said about Great White’s relative lack of responsibility for The Station Fire, “When a band travels from town to town, local safety ordinances are often a mystery. THERE ARE NO STANDARDS. What is acceptable in Portland may be illegal in San Antonio.”  The Catholic Church may now discover the same regarding their Michael-Jackson-style confidentiality agreements, that what provides confidentiality in one state, would seem to compound their guilt in another.)

Sure, the papal document “INSTRUCTION, ON THE MANNER OF PROCEEDING IN CASES OF SOLICITATION,” from 1962, “FROM THE SUPREME AND HOLY CONGREGATION OF THE HOLY OFFICE,” stamped,

instructed victims of any priests’ sexual solicitation including “pediastry,” to swear to keep it covered-up, “under the pain of excommunication...  I promise sacredly, vow and swear, to observe inviolably the secret in all matters and details...  nor will I ever, directly or indirectly...  even for the most urgent and most serious cause even for the purpose of a greater good, commit anything against this fidelity to the secret.”  (emphasis in the original)  Lawyer Daniel J. Shea said that he first learned of that document by seeing it mentioned in “Sacramentorum Sactitatis Tutela,” a current document on the Vatican Web site in 2002, in which Cardinal Joseph Rat-zinger, who headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith but is now Pope Benedict XVI, said that the 1962 document was still official “until now.”

Yet since Densmore isn’t a dyed-in-the-wool sociopath, but is, in mental terms, an “at-risk” youth, one could say that ignoring his past would serve the “greater good.”  At the very least, this forgiveness could seem to be plausible positive thinking.  The letter from Msgr. Christian says, “I understand your concern with your perceived need not to consider yourself to have compromised your principles in this matter and would like to explain the requests which were contained in my letter.”  Psychologists of this mold would say both that to feel distressed because you consider yourself to have compromised your principles, is a form of self-obsession, and that it’s very unpragmatic to care too much about principles, to do things on principle.  They also, like Msgr. Christian, would assume that one characterologically “is,” however troubled and/or weak he is acting in a problem situation, such as this survivor of molestation seeming to be an angry and troubled young man, because that’s how the authorities assess him in this situation.  Yet “John Doe XI” not going after any more money than reimbursement for his therapy, sure does look reasonable and considerate, and he kept the molestation quiet for close to twenty years.  That document from 1962 says regarding parishioners informing church authorities about any solicitations that priests make, “the person is bound to it from the natural law itself,” and one could also say that such “principles” are a matter of natural law when it comes to informing anyone else.

           

In this whole situation one can see plenty of examples of the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression.  If, “Always at the forefront of the mission is Divine Mercy which constrains judgment and prescribes unconditional love and forgiveness,” is taken literally, this has the absolutist parallels between Christian forgiveness and these cognitive distortions, ignoring the human toll.  Msgr. Christian minimized disqualified and filtered out, the reasonability and considerateness of John Doe XI, even though Christian objectively described this leniency in the sentence that preceded his calling John Doe XI “angry and troubled.”  This label certainly magnified what seemed to be wrong with him.  Christian seemed to have figured that either John Doe XI was angrily self-obsessed or he wasn’t.  In an overgeneralized sense, “angry and troubled” seemed to be how he is, and was labeled.  What seemed to matter is what he should do differently.

Regarding that other victim, the forgiveness that was expected from him was labeled “your own adult perspective,” as if of course this was what he should have been.  Densmore and his therapist minimized what Densmore did, expecting the victim to fall into line with this, in the hope of healing.  As the AA slogans say, “Resentment is like taking poison in hopes that your enemy will die.”  “Keeping resentments is like holding yourself for ransom.”  “Hatred destroys the hater, not the hated.”  Such working toward future healing was supposed to be all that really mattered.  If that victim considered attaining that personal goal to be everything that really mattered, this would have required considerable: all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filter, disqualifying the positive, magnification or minimization, should statements, labeling and mislabeling, and personalization.  Christian’s minimizing what Father Roger did, would also require magnifying what would seem to be wrong with the victims’ anger at his imprudence in what he allowed.  Calling recidivist pedophiles, “shackled by an evil that humiliates and knocks them down again and again,” sure does make them sound like the victims.  And the REPORT ON THE INVESTIGATION OF THE DIOCESE OF MANCHESTER also says about Landry, another perv priest, “As an adult, Doe XLVII was active in his church.  He taught CCD for 8 years.  By being a leader within the church as an adult, Doe XLVII was trying to gain acceptance and ‘make amends to the church’ after his dealings with Landry.  Doe XLVII never revealed his abuse to the church.  By 1994, he became ‘bitter’ toward the church.”

And anyone who was sexually abused would then have to deal with it under such conventionally Western terms, including men though this victim-self-blaming logic fits the female role more.  The book Victims No Longer by Mike Lew, for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse, is certainly very affirming toward them.  Yet every now and then, you could see the sort of logic that says that confidence in what will happen to oneself, is the same as self-confidence.  The chapter “Self-Image, Self-Esteem, and Perfectionism,” includes, “Not having the ability to protect himself or significantly alter his situation led to a feeling of inferiority and powerlessness....  No one can preserve positive self-esteem while feeling powerless and inferior,” “First, being a perfectionist while perceiving himself as ‘damaged goods’ leaves the survivor feeling even more hopeless,” “Feeling passive and fearful, the male survivor is able to sabotage or discount any career achievement.  An important aspect of recovery is development of a more positive self-image,” and, “He could put an end to striving, frustration, failures, and self-hatred.”  One might wonder what a child’s: inability to protect himself or significantly alter his situation, powerlessness, being damaged, hopelessness, passivity, fear, striving, frustration, failures, etc., which resulted from his being victimized by violent crimes, have to do with: inferiority, lack of self-esteem, perfectionism, discounting any career achievement, a negative self-image, self-hatred etc., which involve his inner self.

           

And what a coincidence, this absolutely illogical victim-self-blaming just happens to follow the pattern of the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression.  As Beating Depression by Dr. John Rush says, “In Africa, depressed persons rarely experience self-blame, guilt or suicidal rumination as part of their depression, whereas Western depressions typically involve much guilt and self-blame, and predispose to suicide.  Arabs who develop depression tend to complain of difficulties in digestion, abdominal pain, and loss of appetite and weight.  Again, guilt, self-blame and suicide are rare.  On the other hand, westernized and more affluent Arabs develop a depression more similar to that seen in the West.”

And wouldn’t you know it, one theme of this victim-self-blaming just happens to be a cognitive distortion of modern Western depression, which this book describes in exactly the same words as Dr. Burns: All-or-Nothing Thinking.  One of the sections accentuated with a darker background, headed “All-or-Nothing Thinking,” begins with a quote from Idries Shah, “To ‘see both sides’ of a problem is the surest way to prevent a complete solution.  Because there are always more than two sides.”  Lew then goes on to say that abuse survivors would have a more realistic perspective of their own lives, if they saw that more than two sides of the problems that they address, exist.

Yet when self-help writes for people who are faced with problems they have to solve, they’re supposed to see only one side, “What can I change, and what must I accept?”, since exploring other questions is the surest way to prevent a complete solution.  Sure, this would lead to a very one-dimensional solution on the backs of the victims, but it’s going to produce more of a solution than would assessing moral responsibility, holding responsible the irresponsible person who caused it, etc.  Reductionism reduces distractions.  If the problem to be solved is a belief that one’s own abuse was normal, then a multi-dimensional perspective would help, but if the problem is the hardship, sinfulness, etc., that just impacted one’s life, anything that would distract from expediency would distract from a complete solution.  Sure, as the webpage On Speculation and Manipulation in Therapy says, “When it works, justice is always very particular.  It proceeds on a case-by-case basis with a careful weighing of the facts and an equally careful examination of the underlying logic of key arguments.”  That would mean looking at the many sides of an injustice.  But by self-help standards, this would constitute analysis paralysis, futile moralizing, etc.  A law of logic, the Law of the Excluded Middle, would seem to apply, where either you’re focusing on getting the most complete solution (and you can’t count on anyone but yourself to do this), or you’re not.  If your chain is as strong as its weakest length, then it has to be perfect.  One might think that the only victims of child molestation who could possibly feel self-blame about it, would be females abused in adolescence since they conceivably could wonder if their personalities might have come across as charming, sexy, etc., but modern Western victim-self-blaming isn’t limited to possible moral responsibility.

The entire approach of Catholic forgiveness of the perv priests, is amazingly likely to look like The Flip Game.  U.S. Catholic ran an article “BROKEN TRUST, BROKEN LIVES, Survivors of priest sexual abuse speak out,” which says that the brother of an abused girl said, “The church has always dealt with the survivors of abuse with suspicion—they saw them only as potential lawsuits and liabilities—while they’ve always dealt with the priests with compassion and mercy and forgiveness,” and that he, “believes the church would be facing fewer and less-costly civil court confrontations if its approach had been reversed—if it had been the victims who received the church’s ‘healing and love’ while the abusing priests were recognized as the fiscal liabilities they have so painfully proven to be.”  A man who was abused himself, said, “It strikes me that people like me and the media have now become the church’s conscience when the situations should be reversed.”

But this is what forgiveness looks like in practical terms.  Everyone who has ever been scolded for his resentment, knows the logic which says that those who had caused the problem in the past are now helpless to undo it, but the victims who are now demandingly acting like victims, aren’t helpless to stop this.  Those who have this attitude are morally bankrupt, and the victims and the media aren’t.  Yet in modern Western society, the realism of the morally bankrupt, increases society’s homeostasis so is more socially responsible, while one’s expecting this sinful world to be as he’d have it, decreases homeostasis.  It seems that aggressive tendencies are ineradicable, so we must eradicate the hurt feelings and other weaknesses that result from aggressive behavior.

           

The whole idea of minimizing potentially everything that anyone ever did because it “happened in the past,” might seem as if it’s usually in the dolorous realm of mundane banal problems, though we certainly should care about these, since they’re likely the cause of most of the depression, anxiety, etc.  Also, if no limits are set, this would seem to make just as much sense for Densmore’s sins as it would for legal sins.  Yet this logic could shape some very serious decision-making and irresponsibility.  The Congressional Record of September 20, 2002 has Senator Byrd quoting a Newsweek magazine article titled “How Saddam Happened,” as saying that on Dec. 20, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld “had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to Baghdad as a special envoy,” and “After Rumsfeld’s visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments....  According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included...  chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of ‘bacteria/fungi/protozoa’ to the IAEC.  According to former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax.  The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale.”

“No single policymaker or administration deserves blame for creating, or at least tolerating [try “enabling”], a monster; many of their decisions seemed reasonable at the time.  Even so, there are moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one cringe.  It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons.”

This Congressional Record soon quotes Rumsfeld as responding that “shopping list” meant only that this is what the Iraqi government asked to buy.  Yet the Congressional Record goes on to include some documents from the American federal government, listing which microbes were sold to Iraq with official American approval, including: Baccilus Anthracis (anthrax), Clostridium Botulinum (botulism), Histoplasma Capsulatum, (“causes a disease superficially resembling tuberculosis”), Brucella Melitensis (“a bacterial which can cause chronic fatigue, loss of appetite, profuse sweating when at rest, pain in joints and muscles, insomnia, nausea, and damage to major organs”), Clostridium Perfringens (“a highly toxic bacteria which causes gas gangrene”), Escherichia Coli (E.Coli), and other “Class III pathogens” and “Etiologic Agents.”  And some of these are officially listed as headed for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission.  These documents are no doubt what comedians refer to when they talk about Dubya responding to, “What proof do you have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction?”, by saying, “We kept the receipts.”

The article How Saddam Happened is included in the Record, and shows typical evasions of moral responsibility, which, if they legitimately applied to these actions, would legitimately apply to any actions.  Near the beginning the article says, “Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon.”  It also tells of other crimes against humanity that the American government knew of.  Yet the same article treats the providing of this “Devil” with the germs of germ warfare, as if it’s just the clumsy way that things go sometimes, and treats the permitted export of “numerous shipments of ‘bacteria/fungi/protozoa’ to the IAEC,” as simply “unsettling.”  Other examples of such evasion are, “Nonetheless, Rumsfeld’s long-ago interlude with Saddam is a reminder that today’s friend can be tomorrow’s mortal threat,” “No single policymaker or administration deserves blame for creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of their decisions seemed reasonable at the time,” “It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons.  But it happened [happened through spontaneous combustion?],”  “America’s past stumbles, while embarrassing, are not an argument for inaction in the future,” and, “But the story of how America helped create a Frankenstein monster it now wishes to strangle is sobering.  It illustrates the power of wishful thinking, as well as the iron law of unintended consequences.”  The article also tells of how American military support was supposed to serve the purposes of limiting Iran’s power and promoting Iraq’s secular government, and it seems that one way of serving these aims was to export etiologic agents to someone with a clear predilection to make them into weapons.

Even at first glance, any dictator whose atomic energy commission wants bacteria/fungi/protozoa lethal enough to be used in weapons, and who’d also want a million and a half doses of an antidote for chemical weapons, intends to commit big-scale war crimes.  What were the intended consequences of this, unless you’re going to assume that since the American government didn’t have a malicious desire for Saddam to manufacturing these weapons, then his manufacturing them constitutes “unintended consequences” which an “iron law” is responsible for?  Even if we figured that if Saddam would likely use his weapons on another country so we could “realistically” accept this as one of those problems that sometimes happen in the real world, it still should have been obvious that the chances were good that we could be the targets.  Chances are also very good that all of the Americans responsible for these sales could be found guilty of war crimes.  The US also would have treated as a rogue state, any other country that would have sold the same germs to Iraq.  It also would have made sense for Bush and Blair to try to persuade the Security Council to have the UN invade Iraq, by saying, “If you take these weapons of mass destruction seriously enough to invade Iraq, we’ll take them seriously enough to turn over those responsible for Iraq getting a lot of its original pathogenic germs, to be tried for war crimes.”

Sure, when Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, on September 24, 2007, said about Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad such things as, “Today I feel the weight of all the civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for,” the audience applauded.  Maybe if someone said something similar about Reagan’s putting the Iranian people at risk by arranging that Saddam receive those germs, the audience would have responded just as emphatically.  Then again, maybe not, since a very powerful person could use his great power in ways that look more subtle and gentlemanly, but have greater dangers.  And, of course, the same would go if Saddam had used those germs against Israeli civilian, and the public had found out that the Reagan Administration had provided them.  Yes, some conceptions of evil really are universal, and this fits the universal conception of evil.  Some dangerous behavior is just too dangerous.

The Federation of American Scientists’ website also has, among their many documents on the coddling of Saddam, a presidential document, “NATIONAL SECURITY DIRECTIVE 26,” dated October 2, 1989, after the gassing of the Kurds.  Its section on Iraq begins,

An AP story of September 25, 2004 quoted Rumsfeld as saying to a Senate committee that Iraqi elections should take place in January, and that even if only three-fourths or four-fifths of the country could be included due to chaos in the rest of the country, “So be it.  Nothing’s perfect in life.”  It would make just as much sense for Rumsfeld, if Saddam had used the germs that he imported from the US, to have the same attitude toward his own role in getting the export approved.  After all, his intent wasn’t malicious, so it would be very easy to give its consequences a morally neutral label such as “unfairness.”

Moral responsibility for such things would reflect true  traditional American principles , of secular trust-earning and self-respecting (“Proud to be an American,” can’t mean “My country right or wrong,” unless one is just as willing to be as proud of something that’s this wrong, as something that’s right.), personal responsibility for one’s own choices.  But, of course, some time would probably pass between the time that Ronnie’s administration secured the war-crime supplies for Saddam, and the time that they’d be a danger to us.  At this later time, Anthrax Reagan’s successors could always say, “But you’ve got to understand that now we’re helpless to undo what we did then!  Therefore, now we have no other choice but to go to war, to call Saddam another Hitler, etc., as if we’re just passive victims of Saddam!  After all, some people, like Saddam, are evil!”  If we’d been just another weak country, especially if we’d been a potential victim, the excuse “But in 1985, we didn’t know Saddam was evil!”, wouldn’t work.  Reaganomics’ self-efficacious survival skills would have been the first to say that anyone who didn’t see the signs in 1985, “should have known better.”  But while the weak are often blamed for “letting themselves in for” problems that they didn’t play an active part in causing, in that their survival skills should have been good enough that they knew to protect themselves, even if the strong play an active part in causing a problem, if you told them that they “should have known better,” you’d seem preachy, judgmental, controlling, manipulative, vindictive, etc.

Even something of this magnitude, if it happened two decades previously, could still seem to be just a “long-ago interlude.”  One could cause such obvious big problems for the future, and once that future is here, he could dismiss what caused them as merely past history.  Those who get resentful judgmental and blame-finding about past history, are likely to be condemned as not being achievement-oriented real Americans.  This would be the foreign policy version of the Reagan administration’s deficit spending posing as supply-side economics.

Also, as long as you’re powerful enough, you don’t have to earn people’s trust, since trusting you would be the most pragmatic, well-adjusted, grudge-burying, thing that they could do.  It also wouldn’t matter in the slightest how Saddam happened.  In fact, even if the danger would be speculative at the time of a later invasion, these measures would still seem legitimate.  It used to be that “drawing a line in the sand” meant setting limits to such human imperfections, but now it requires a dearth of these limits.  When in our day-to-day lives we’re told that anything that anyone already did, is past history so caring about it is simply a grudge, that might seem so banal that of course we’d barely even notice it, but the impunity-filled logic is the same, and this happening so routinely can cause big, big problems that no United Nations Commission is going to hold anyone responsible for.

 

 

 

 


             

 

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