Doing Good–How Idealism Quickly Loses Its Luster In Nasty Places

Hermione Baxter joined Children Are The World to do good, to work for those children born in poverty, misery, and oppression; and to make a difference.  

While her college classmates were headed off to Business and Law School, she joined the Peace Corps.  There, she was certain, she would find the answer to life’s puzzles and bring home a restored belief in humanity and God.

The training sessions in rural Wisconsin included an intensive course in Yoruba, the rudiments of arid agriculture, and the cultural does and don’ts of dealing with Nigerians, Muslims, and societies quite different from her own.  

Hermione had been brought up in a small town in rural Ohio, to a farm family, and one of rich American heritage.  Her Great Grandfather, Hiram,  had come from New England in the early days of Westward Expansion, found the relatively benign climate, fertile land, and peaceful Indians more than he could have ever hoped for, and settled down, the patriarch of successive generations of Baxters who never moved more than ten miles from the old homestead.

Hiram was particularly taken with the Shawnee who at the time of his migration were a semi-migratory, nomadic tribe which moved often and freely within the Ohio Valley and only occasionally set up their teepees for a longer stay.  It was during one of these temporary sojourns that Hiram got to know Tenskwatawa, twin brother of Tecumseh, and  prominent in Indian affairs in the early Nineteenth Century. 

‘Tennie’, as Hiram affectionately called him, was, like his brother, a proud man, patriotic and defiantly loyal to his tribe and his people; yet the central Ohio branch of the Shawnees which he governed had never met up to expectations.  Although the same rich Shawnee blood ran through their veins, there was something desultory about their attitude, a lack of motivation and ambition.  By the time Hiram’s son came to take over the now prosperous Baxter ranch, the Shawnee were living on three reservations in present-day Ohio -  Hog Creek, Lewistown, and Wapakaneta. 

Conditions on the Ohio reservations were little different from the many others in the country, certainly not as bad as in the Dakotas, but bad enough.  Crime, alcoholism, and broken families were the norm.  Hiram’s son, Hermione’s grandfather, had, thanks to his father, maintained a close relationship with a number of Indians on the reservation, and would take his young granddaughter there to spend Sunday afternoons.  For him it was a pleasant reminiscence of his own childhood, and every time he was with Indians, no matter how low they had fallen, the image of the great Tenskwatawa and his heroic brother Tecumseh came to mind.

The young Hermione, on the other hand, could see only the desperate poverty, the ramshackle trailers, mangy dogs, broken down trucks, mud, and drunkenness.  She hated the trips to the reservation but went because she adored her grandfather and would do anything with him and for him.

It was this experience, Hermione considered, that was the motivation for joining the Peace Corps.  Her work in Africa amongst the continent’s poorest, most desperate, but most beautiful, proud people would be a final expression of her childhood sympathies for underprivileged peoples.

Her co-trainees were a happy, positive, and equally motivated group who had joined the organization for the same generous regions.  They of course hoped for great adventure, but they were headed to the Dark Continent for one reason only – to do good.  As they dispersed from their in-country training camp outside Lagos, they assured each other that they would keep in touch, and looked forward to the yearly meetings which the Nigeria head office arranged on the Delta.

The Volunteers were sent to every region of the country – from the strictly Islamic North to the very tribal rainforest interior – and each were charged with different tasks and objectives.  Some were to raise poultry and pigs, others to teach school, and still others to work on public works.

Hermione’s village was a pitiful place, far worse than the Lewistown Reservation back home – shabby, mosquito-infested and fly-ridden, hot, and filthy. Worst of all were the people, thieves and tricksters who saw her not as an American savior, but a mark to be had.  

While she wrote back to her parents of ‘the lovely people’ of the village and talked only of the ‘challenges’ she faced, she had nothing but scorn for the place and its inhabitants.   She knew this was definitely not what she was supposed to feel, but she couldn’t help herself.

The Peace Corps should have known better, she thought, and given her and her colleagues something more transitional.  How could they expect a young American woman from the Ohio farmland to survive in such a primitive place?

Paul Theroux wrote a book about just this experience.  In Lower River he describes the odyssey of a middle-aged man who was a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small village in Africa forty years before and who, thanks to the fond and happy memories he had kept for all those years, decided to return. 

Everything however had changed.  The warm, generous, welcoming, and friendly people and fertile, modestly prosperous environment had disappeared.  He found only corruption, exploitation, thievery, and deceit.  The years since African independence had not been kind to Africa, and the heady optimism felt in the first days of liberation had disappeared entirely.  Much of the continent was ruled by despots, petty autocrats, and Big Men, and their corruption had filtered down to the lowest village.  The Theroux character gets embroiled in dangerous village politics and barely escapes with his life.

So Hermione’s experience should have been expected.  Africa was no longer the place of simplicity, generosity, and good will; but had been deformed by the exploitation of the ruling class, the diversion of foreign investment into Swiss bank accounts, tribal hatred, and a historic international indifference to the plight of Africa.

Fortunately there were other Americans in the area – a well-driller and his young family who lived in town; a Methodist missionary who lived in a white frame house in the jungle that tearfully reminded her of the Midwest, and a Dominican priest who had been sent by his Archbishop to take over a small church which had sought spiritual assistance – and Hermione found herself spending most of her time with all three.  The other Volunteers in the area also frequented these congenial homes away from home, and the families and priest were quite happy to have company.

Over time a new, unpleasant ethos emerged.  The Nigerians were called ‘Jeers’ and laughed at by the Volunteers for their backwardness, insensitivity, and ignorance.  The poultry farms set up by the Volunteers to be productive, commercial enterprises had within months fallen apart.  The original breeding chickens had been eaten, the cages had been dismantled and the chicken wire diverted for irrelevant uses, and only a few, ragged chickens and one cropless rooster remained.  

The schoolteachers faced empty classrooms, diffident local administrators, and no supplies.  Those Volunteers who were to work on public works projects found the same levels of apathy and indifference.  Roads did not get improved, wells were never dug, and repairs to public buildings ignored.

The cadre the US government had trained as the future cadre of American international development - Peace Corps Volunteers chosen for their Americanness, their down-home rectitude and goodness, and modest but never challenging intelligence - turned out to be just the opposite of their compassionate vision, a group whose clients would always be ‘Jeers’, ‘Guats’, and ‘Bunglers’.

Sent out to the more needy and deserving parts of the world, Volunteers were supposed to return convinced of the appropriateness of their can-do enterprise, filled with a renewed idealism, and with the practical experience of managing development projects in the Third World.  They returned with none of the above but with a conviction that development would never work; and worse, why even bother?

With her experience, Hermione was sought after by the Washington non-profit agencies which were the beneficiaries of generous US Government contracts to help raise African countries out of poverty, to instill a sense of American-style justice and civil society, and provide humanitarian assistance to the disadvantaged.  

She took a job with one of the most well-known agencies, and headed back to Africa, feeling that having an office in the capital city, a house in the international quarter, a car, driver, and full expenses, she could finally do the good she had earlier intended.

Of course her expectations were as idealistic as they had been upon joining the Peace Corps, and she was disappointed to find that the projects so liberally financed by the United States were politically driven, overly ambitious, and largely outside the cultural context of the ‘beneficiary’ countries. Millions of dollars in foreign assistance authorized by Congress went quickly and easily into the pockets of local authorities. 

Project after project failed dismally, only to be refinanced because “We have learned our lesson”. The World Bank’s Annual Development Review persistently claimed an upward trajectory only to retract such optimism in subsequent Reviews.  International development was a joke, yet despite the eradicable idealism of those in government, in Congress, and in the non-profits, it continued and continues to this day.

Hermione kept with it for years.  Managed well, it was a good life – nice hotels and restaurants in rapidly developing capitals, assignations among the international development consultants freed from home, wife, and children for a beach idyll in the tropics, good pay, and collegial friends.  She like most, gave up on any idea of doing good long ago, and took what was given – a not unreasonable, not unpleasant life.

So much for idealism, so easily corrupted.  One non-profit agency for which Hermione worked was granted millions by a private foundation.  Freed from heavy-handed, obstructionist government rules and regulations, the agency could finally do what it wanted and make a difference.  Yet, so enamored with is ‘participatory, cooperative, down-up, community approach’ to development where the means were more important than the ends (in this case reducing infant and maternal mortality) it failed miserably, refusing massive tetanus vaccinations and malaria drug prophylaxis for communalism and ‘sharing’. 

Hermione eventually retired and never looked back in the rear view mirror.  Development had treated her well.  Thanks to the same nihilism that affects most people who work in professions which pay well but do little, she had few regrets and many fond memories.

Sins Of The Past Can Never Be Forgiven–Jon Gruden And The Bloodlust Of The American Taliban Left

All sins can be forgiven, the Church teaches, even the most heinous and mortal, if confessed with true penitence and remorse. This sense of forgiveness is derived from Biblical text, interpreted by Church Fathers in the early centuries of Christianity, and woven into doctrine by the fourth at the Council of Nicaea.  

Jesus died on the cross to forgive the sins of all humanity because there were too many and too grave to be remitted alone.  It was God’s look at a world he created in hope and expectation but failed in its promise.  The Flood – God’s acknowledgement of the gross imperfection of his creation and desire to begin again – was futile; for the survivors lived to  recreate the same, sinful, disrespectful world he had hoped to destroy. 

By sending his son on a mission of sacrifice, repentance, and universal redemption he could devolve moral responsibility to individuals, accord them the choice of damnation or salvation, and offer ways to personal penitence.  In so doing he could leave his Old Testament rage and vindictiveness behind.

Although the world has changed little since the Crucifixion and it still produces generation after generation with consistently questionable  behavior, the Christian ethos remains.   Not only can sins be forgiven, but a greater sense of a universal humanity which might be prone to moral error and misjudgment but redeemable nonetheless can be created.  We are all imperfect, fallible, and unsure in our search for meaning; but understanding of our human nature will create a more tolerant, respectful world in which spiritual evolution can be assured.

Given this religious, philosophical foundation for America’s Christian culture, it is surprising that the concept of forgiveness is so remarkably absent today.  The Christian ethos was not meant to be uniquely spiritual, but intended to provide guidance for secular affairs as well.  The brotherhood which Christ preached was not to be restricted to his followers.  The spirit of understanding, compassion, and forgiveness was meant to be universal.

So what to make of the Left’s intemperate, judgmental, unforgiving, harsh, and punitive approach to human error?  How to explain its Taliban-like executions of those judged to be apostates?

Recently Jon Gruden, a well-known, successful professional football coach, was forced to resign from his post because ten years ago he had used ‘inappropriate language’, epithets and characterizations common in locker rooms but rarely used outside them; usage which by no means signified deep-seated, ingrained racism, homophobia, or misogyny. 

Not only has the coach been admired and respected by the black players on his team, but none of those under him ever felt intimidated or discriminated against because of their race.  The language used in the days long past was clearly offhand, casual, and insignificant. 

The fact that the coach has always been a model of social propriety, respect, and racial fairness made no difference to the Leftist executioners who called for his head. 

Worse still, for the Left there is no statute of limitations for social sins.  Any expression used twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ago which goes counter to prevailing censorious culture must be condemned; and the works and successes of those who made them ignored.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great, courageous man; but he was also a Lothario who cheated on his wife and was as much of a sexual wastrel as JFK.   Did these moral failings disqualify these men from leadership or high public office? Should one disregard their notable achievements?  If they were alive today, would they be as roundly and universally chastised and thrown out as the football coach?

Many women immediately disqualified Bill Clinton from any further political consideration after he had sex with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. If he cheated on his wife, they said, he will most certainly cheat on us.  There can be no separating personal peccadillos from political ones.

Immanuel Kant said, “'The Jews still cannot claim any true genius, any truly great man. All their talents and skills revolve around stratagems and low cunning. They are a nation of swindlers.”

George Bernard Shaw said, “Stop being Jews and start being human beings”. Theodore Dreiser said, “New York is a 'kike's dream of a ghetto,' and Jews are not 'pure Americans' and 'lack integrity”. 

 
Are we to burn their books? Consign them to the trash heaps of literary history?

Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and many of the Founding Fathers and their inheritors were slave-owners, not uncommon at the time.  Should their memory be erased because of engagement in a system which was legal, widespread, historically common, and culturally accepted? And should they be thrown out with the trash along with Kant?

The answer of the Left to these questions is a resounding ‘Yes’.  All of history must be looked at through a contemporary lens and judged accordingly.  Books must be burned, statues toppled, streets and institutions renamed all in the name of doctrinal purity.  No quarter must be given in the rush to a progressive utopia.

Today’s living victims of this arrogant bloodletting have it worst of all.  They feel they must apologize for occurrences in the distant past regardless of social and cultural context, prevailing norms and attitudes, and laws and legislation.  Ninety percent of men over a certain age today used language deplored today in their youth – language which reflected an era where racial, ethnic, religious, and gender differences were highlighted, characterized and caricatured.  It was an age of reflexive commentary, not deep-seated animus or hostility.

If any of these men felt they went beyond such cavalier comments and acted in an immoral, discriminatory, and hateful way; then they should have admitted it, confessed it, and done penance for it.  Words without action are only words; and only today have they become as potently significant as actual acts.

The one-issue morality of the Left ignores human complexity and the ability to hold conflicting views at the same time, to be inconsistent, and to be ignorant and brilliant at the same time.  It is ignorant, backward, and antithetical to any moral code.  The progressive Left has, in fact, forsworn Christian morality itself.  It is condemnatory, self-righteous, and profoundly ignorant of human nature.

There is only one criterion of judgement that should have been applied to the now disgraced football coach – has he in his position of authority racially abused, demeaned, derogated, or dismissed players of color?  If not, then he is innocent of charges of racism and should be left to his professional career.  If he feels that any past action whether word or deed exceeded the cultural bounds of the time, then it is a matter of private confession and hope for forgiveness – not any public apology.

Far Worse Than COVID–A Pandemic Of Viral Righteousness

Brighton Park is a leafy, upscale neighborhood of Washington, DC – good schools, low crime, easy parking, and most of all political solidarity.  Brighton Park is Democrat, progressive, and unashamedly liberal.  It is the kind of place where rainbow signs for inclusivity, Black Lives Matter and Hate Has No Home Here banners are everywhere, and where neighborly chit chat is about the hateful Trump era, the welcome compassion and good will of Joe Biden, and the importance of doing the right thing.  It is a community proud of its political solidarity and graceful uniformity.

All well and good, except for its nasty undertones – a politically perfect and uniform community cannot brook dissent or disagreement, and anyone doing so is quickly called out, dunned, and marginalized.  

Uniformity and singularity of purpose not only strengthen political commitment and assure electoral victory, they also reduce the hostility, anger, and hypertension found in more politically diverse neighborhoods.  There is no question of speaking openly and loudly about one’s political beliefs whether about the President, climate change, racial injustice, sexual bigotry, the brutality of Israeli occupiers, or unhinged capitalism.  

There is no confessional or conspiratorial nature to the beliefs in Brighton Park, nothing to be kept quiet, no concerns about keeping one’s own counsel.  One expects no opposition and by and large gets none.

“What is this?”, said a neighbor bringing figs next door to the family she assumed was of her opinions but seeing an American flag flying over the porch.  To her an American flag was a symbol of reactionary patriotism and right-wing subversion.  For her it had lost any historical meaning and was flown only to disrupt sacred spaces and her own politically anointed ground. It could only be a symbol of reactionary protest flown as a disingenuous but unassailable icon of American patriotism.  

One could only intimate the real meaning behind the flag, for it was still, after all, a hallowed symbol of America; and there was always the possibility, however slight, that flying the colors signified a belief in a progressive, ideal American future.

The neighbor was expecting this reaction from a woman who had spoken to her about the absurdity of the Fourth of July celebrating as it did the creation of a racist, exploitive, greedy, capitalist demon.  How could anyone raise the flag on this day and cheer the robber barons, slave owners, Native American killers and environmental predators of the past and present? The day was an anathema, and she and her friends ignored it, were outspoken about their indifference, and snidely referred to the fireworks on the Mall as ‘white, elitist, regressive, and offensive’.

The shades had been drawn on intellectual inquiry, objectivity, and rational discourse. 

This arrogant presumptuousness had a more insidious side.  It was viral, infectious, and mutated rapidly as it spread through the community.  Righteous assumptions spread like sexual innuendo, picked up and spread with embellishment and distortion.  Every exaggerated claim, every inflated proposition, and every deformed fact was taken as gospel; and before long the entire community was a nest of unfounded, hysterical belief.

Lawyers, professors, senior bureaucrats and foundation executives, all of whom prided themselves on rationality, good judgement, propriety, and above all intellectual patience, were no different; and in fact they were among the most outspoken.  Worse, their professional stature gave additional credibility to their words – the same words repeated again and again through cycles of idealistic distortion in the larger community.

There can be no two sides to current arguments of race, gender, ethnicity, climate, and economics in Brighton Park, nor can there ever be; and all efforts must be made and all resources mobilized to assure that such doctrinal purity be preserved, promoted, and protected. 

Free speech is a false, misleading, and outdated notion, say progressives.  The goal of creating a world without racism, sexism, and ethnic prejudice; one of equal distribution of wealth; and one of respectful diversity and universal inclusivity is too important to have to confront ignorant, senseless, and self-serving opposition. 

Social media, the social environment, and all public spaces must be purged. Speech suggesting any interpretation of persistent black poverty and social dysfunction other than systemic racism will be disallowed.  No accommodating measures to global warming – the creation of urban canals, peripheral wetlands, or elevated structures; no adaptation of agribusiness through genetic modification, crop selection, and variable production zones – will be tolerated. 

This arrogant righteousness has gone viral and pandemic.  It is everywhere. Public apologies for events that took place decades earlier in a totally different cultural and socio-economic environment have become de rigeur even though they were not considered wrong or objectionable in the day.  Wrong is wrong, shout progressive utopians.  The sins of the past are the sins of the present.  Surprisingly, those accused take to the microphone to condemn their actions, beg forgiveness, and promise contrition and reform.

History itself is subjected to the same narrow, ignorant critique.  Slavery is an absolute wrong whether now, in the Old South, Africa, or in Ancient Rome, Greece, and Persia.  There can be no mitigating circumstances, no understanding of society, culture, or history.  Anyone with any association with slavery must be condemned regardless of anything else.  Kings, emperors, courtiers, statesmen, artists responsible for the creation of civilization’s best expression must be universally condemned for their slaveholding.

Historical revisionism, once the refuge of the ignorant and deluded has now become a celebrated principle.  The toppling of statues, the renaming of streets, schools, and institutions, the reflexive condemnation of any and all scurrilous, retrograde predators, must continue until the scourge of racism is expunged and the nation is clean.

Those very progressives who put the restoration of social justice at the top of their list routinely applaud the abrogation of civil rights in cases of alleged sexual abuse.  Men at universities throughout the country are assumed guilty, denied the right to face their accusers  and refused a fair trial.  Men are ipso facto sexual apes, abusers of women, and social outliers who deserve none of these supposed God-given rights.

Humor is dead in America, lamented by comedians everywhere who have been reduced to gross ‘non-offensive’ sexual or bathroom humor.  The likes of the young Eddie Murphy, the Borscht Belt Jews, or the present D.L. Hughley – outrageously funny, irreverent, and politically incorrect – are forbidden.  No offense can be suggested, all potential victims must be protected.

We are a nation of victimhood, identity, and thin skin.  The old meme, ‘We are all adults here’, no longer applies.  We cannot be counted on to decide for ourselves.  We must be corralled, tethered, cinched, and ridden by our superiors.  The elitism so vilified by the Left has been created by them with a vengeance.  Only a select group of purified overlords can be in power.  The people – ignorant, backward, gun-toting, bass-fishing, trailer trash – must be reformed, re-educated, and cleansed.

There are no quick-fixes for this virus, no COVID-like jabs; and so it is likely to spread until it peters out or is finally stopped by more principled, historically and philosophically-grounded political leaders.  This is inevitable, but will be a long time coming.