Tag: Nick Cave

This week The Atlantic published “Ukraine and the Words that Lead to Mass Murder” by Anne Applebaum. She quotes a character in the novel Everything Flows by Soviet writer Vasily Grossman:

It seemed….familiar.

I consider the Russian propaganda narrative, the one saturating their news feeds – that Ukrainians are Nazis. Degenerates.
Drug addicts.
Russophobes.
Trying to destroy us Russians.

Then I think about us here in our free, relatively peaceful, ultra-blessed country. How quickly we put down our neighbors, out of ignorance, lack of curiosity, jealousy, insecurity…

But at other times from a nobler motive – when “calling out” or “holding accountable” goes nowhere, pushing further. To deplore (not just their actions but the people themselves), to disdain, to dehumanize.

Then.. to kill?

We do it in stages. One step at a time.

We do it on social media.

Look familiar?

Here are a few narratives I’ve picked up on over my years on Facebook, both implicit and explicit. I’ve left a space at the end to reflect on our own versions.

• Police = assholes
• Blacks = thugs
• Southerners = racists
• Northerners = hypocrites
• Democrats = child murderers
• Whites = oppressors
• Mexicans = drug gangs
• Muslims = terrorists
• Christians = bigots
• Men = pigs
• Urban = elite
• Rural = backward
• Republicans = full of Hate
• Biden voters have blood on their hands.
• Trumpers are stupid.
• Scientists (and other experts) are liars.
• They want to control us. They want to impose their values on us. They want to destroy our way of life. They want to kill us.
• ________________s (insert your enemy) are trash.

How many steps? Four? Five? Before we have moved from the calling out to the disdain to the dehumanization to cynicism to apathy to killing?

What Applebaum notices in the Russian people is not self-righteous outrage (although that probably showed up at first) but cynical apathy, by design from their own government. A belief that we cannot know the truth so why bother. This reminds me of a refrain I often hear to end an uncomfortable debate: “Well, we can’t really know what’s happening. We can’t trust the experts. We can’t trust our leaders…”

Applebaum further observes that Russian propaganda focuses not on the utopia they seek but on their enemies. This brings to mind what I see around me – a trend toward grievance politics. Both on the Left and the Right. I hear far more outrage over the excesses, oversteppings, and sins of the other side than what we hope and work for.

Why hope? Does it even make a difference? Aren’t you just being naive and enabling, Pollyanna Budd?

The Warrior Emotion

Nick Cave is a musician who suffered the death of a child. Day by day he makes the choice to let his suffering crack open his heart. I find wisdom in his take on hope, not as dreamy escape or naiveté but as courageous – choosing to love. I tend to regard wisdom as the Big Perk of aging. “What are a few wrinkles when I get all this wisdom?” But it’s more than age that makes us wise. One of the wisest human beings I ever met was a teenager permanently in a wheelchair. There is a radiance in her smile, the kind you might see in the very elderly. She makes a daily choice. If I suffer and respond by making the other choice, to close my heart, then no wisdom for me.

Here’s what Cave wrote:

Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, Valerio, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.