What Dickens called “the new oppressors”
“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time…”
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Careful whom you root for. Careful whom you call hero. Careful whom you accept party beverages from. Avoid mistaking them for angels. They are humans.
Brutality is Born on the Right Side of History
“…the troubled time would have heaved her up, under any circumstances. But, imbued from her childhood with a brooding sense of wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class, opportunity had developed her into a tigress. She was absolutely without pity. If she ever had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of her.”
There are at least two people in my life today, past associates and present acquaintances, of whom I am afraid. I have seen their recent works, ways, and passions. How they fight for their causes. How they single out those they esteem villains. How they seek to effect more than rebuke and rebuttal.
They no longer sit cautiously in the sheepfold. They are dissatisfied guarding from within, too confined pacing along a watchtower. They have moved beyond the gate; they search for their next kill.
Were they conservative Republicans, we would already be calling them extremists, and I fear we would be correct. However, taking solace in the assurance they will never vote for Trump, we tolerate their cutting rhetoric and headhunting ways. I am confident if I ever fell under their strong disapproval, they would take to the internet and try to forever stifle my professional possibilities, to cast me out of the circle of our friends, to make me a hiss and byword among the mainstream—to end me.
They would never shoot me; I am fairly confident neither of them owns a gun. Rather, a temperate-seeming mode of capital punishment would be their aim. Citizens, theirs is a digital guillotine.
Dickens as Scripture
“There is prodigious strength,” I answered him, “in sorrow and despair.”
Please read the above line again, making of it what you will, but prizing it as much or more than any line in the Bible or Book of Mormon. As you read it, did you assume I posted it as a positive declaration? Or is it a warning? Both?
A Tale of One Species
“The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.”
We rightly remember the first and last lines of Dicken’s novel A Tale of Two Cities:
- “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
- “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
If this was a review for Goodreads.com, I might say this:
I give this novel 4 stars (out of 5); but I suspect on second reading I will give it 5. That is the magic of Dickens and of classic works in general. They improve with age, they give new wisdom when reread, they remain perennial in their relevance. On revisiting, we learn new things. This gives me hope that entropy is not the sole governing force in the universe.
Perhaps humanity has yet to see its best day. Perhaps America is more than an empire in decline, a Rome falling. Perhaps our two-party system—being a pair of secular churches engaged in mutual inquisition—will yet reclaim the heritage left by our founding fathers. I speak of their legacy of forging compromise, identifying the most pressing crisis, and unifying to overcome it. Perhaps…
Perhaps we must first admit, as many of us on this site are so willing to do when discussing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that NO institution or people are above apostasy and falling into decay. NONE are inerrant. We are all subject to imperfection, to entropy, to failing. We all harm, sometimes intentionally, at the behest of the worst angels of our nature. Perhaps, the only practical solution begins with granting the capacity for evil in ourselves. Perhaps, as our Christian-flavored discussions declare, we are capable of greater and better things. Perhaps…
Though, I am reminded that Osama bin Laden’s death, and the deaths of many others, were ordered by a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. I suspect many of us are okay with that fact.
Thank you for reading. Dear Wheat & Tares readers, what do you think of the notion that brutality is born on the right side of history? Please respond in the comments section below.
Wheat & Tares 
You had me until you briefly considering giving 4 stars instead of 5. Happy to see your repentance.
I concur that darkness often comes out of “righteous” movements in history. Cromwell’s Commonwealth quickly turned into a nightmare for the Irish and Scots. Imperialism was laced with racist undertones that still afflict our world. Capitalism has left us with myriad problems. I really can’t think of a political, ideological or religious movement in history that didn’t make mistakes, cause damage or create an unwanted legacy of one form or another. To often humans are motivated more by zeal than wisdom.
I suppose Voltaire’s answer in the concluding chapter of “Candide” is about the closest to wisdom in this crazy world. We should tend to our own gardens.
Aren’t the persons on any side of any movement all humans? I think one will find individuals displaying both virtue (or beauty) and vice (or brutality) on whichever side one looks.
Epistemological modesty isn’t very sexy unfortunately.
I don’t believe however that those seek greater equity today are as nec. guilty at lacking reflexivity than those most privileged by our present arrangement of sociopolitical institutions.
Got upset today over a fellow protestor waving an untruthful sign about a societal actor heavily involved in our provincial politics. She was transgender, she was hurting, I managed to gently inform her that if our message is not grounded upon the strength of our best arguments, using the strongest evidence relative to its competing arguments – it deserves no power.
But that was just one person, one among hundreds today who came together to dispute our provincial government’s new policies in K-12 public education and elsewhere re: gender and sexual identity.
So let’s not commit the fallacy of false equivalence here. The people who are literally “calling for people’s head” are not randomly, nor equally spread out among different political identity groups. Everyone has crazies but are the crazies equally running the show on either side? Are their demands equally invalid and unjustified?
No. They’re not.
Performative influencers will get their due, relative to the expectations projected onto other people, and their own ability to meet the same expectations. All this social media digital pretension will drop away as people age and realize it’s shallow nature. Poor character slowly reveals itself over time.
Movements will flounder. Nobody will feel or be able to meet the ideal,
And perhaps a new norm based more upon works rather appearances will be achieved.
I’m getting tired as write this a nd am gonna go to bed, but there’s a defensiveness in the post that feels a bit more arrogant than it likely has legs to stand on.
Bah, guy just ripped off Bulwer-Lytton’s “Zanoni.” And all that “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” stuff people like so much? He was getting paid by the word!
Old Man, you get me feeling nostalgic when you mention Candide. Early in college, I was in the musical Leonard Bernstein adapted from Voltaire’s novel. The song “Make Our Garden Grow” remains dear to me, having also sung it concert style a couple of times in choirs, and serves as a wonderfully heartfelt finale to that wild show.
ji, thank you for pointing out the reality of their being more than one side. Point taken.
Canadian Dude, I appreciate the thrust of your argument and am grateful you took the time to share your thoughts, even if they serve as pushback. Regarding the issue of false equivalency, based on all I’ve learned from studying history and fact-based professional journalism, I would agree that the clear majority of people presently willing to propose/perpetrate violence are on the political-right/red-state side of things. Hate groups on the extreme end of conservatism tend to be longer established and more experienced than what currently exists on the left. However, that’s not really the point of my piece.
We’ll have to agree to disagree over the subjective merits of my argument. I stand by the notion that there is great risk for those of us in liberal/progressive circles–risk to assume that since we are currently on the right side of history that we always will be, and that we will never fall into desperate measures of the worst and most brutal kind. I believe the risk is there, not yet a reality, but nonetheless a possibility. And online, angry and deliberately hurtful speech, with real-world consequences for its targets, is quite common on the Left. Regardless, thank you Canadian Dude for taking the time to engage meaningfully with this post. I wish you the best in your journey as an activist