Reign of Terror

Bloodletting and Truth Telling.   

The past isn't history.  It isn't even past.  

If the news is too much to bear just now, try reading history.  Start with the French Revolution. 

A fire ignited.

We are watching a Reign of Terror, a period of sudden reversals of fortune in which the powerful face condemnation and ruin. The wheel turns and the accuser becomes the accused.  We can remind ourselves that the current frenzy of outing mis-deeds is simply an iteration of the familiar pattern in all revolutions.  For a while Robespierre rode high. 

The ground has shifted from the status quo of prior decades.  Now the people under attack are Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Roy Moore, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Bill O'Reilly, Louis C K, Mark Halperin, Kevin Spacey and more coming daily--John Conyers just now--as the pace picks up.  

What was commonplace is now forbidden.  New rules.   The weak are now strong. 

What is different now is the expectation of the permanence of memories.  In the old days--before this century--what was past could disappear, especially if there were no witnesses, no paper trail.  Our expectations are different now.  In the age of the internet, nothing--not a single keystroke--ever fully disappears. 

Google remembers everything.  The technology is changing how we think about the past. The past is accessible  real, permanent, and relevant.  By analogy, we now empower long distant human memories.  Old hurts, old injuries, old crimes are still real. The "it was a long time ago" defense no longer works well. 

This is a problem for a great many men. People old enough to be powerful or rich or famous have had decades to misbehave.  Misbehavior is out there, lurking, for some of them.  Women--or former co-workers or employees of any gender-- say they remember things. They were oppressed.  The powerful person was a perpetrator, an assaulter, a victimizer.  

Dominos fall.

Powerful men are reviewing their histories.  

Another rule has changed, the duty to report.  Women who thought they should stay silent now think they owe it to other women to come forward.  

Some sleepless men are scrambling to figure out their exposure and how to deal with it. Some adamantly deny everything, even in the face of multiple witnesses, e.g. Trump and Moore.  Some immediately accept the premise of the accusation and apologize, e.g. Franken, hoping that will do.  Some immediately fold and try to disappear, leaving co-workers and projects underway abandoned (Spacey, Louis C K, Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin.)  

Modern history suggests these revolutions burn hot--and then hotter--and then they burn out.  Bubbles happen.  Religious revival periods happen.  Revolutions burn out and counter revolutions take hold.  This is not over yet.   We had Prohibition, then repeal. We had slavery, then war and Reconstruction, then Jim Crow.  We had the pre-school satanic cult prosecutions, then apologies and financial settlements.

Male victimizers--now ruined and un-mourned-- are stacking up and it may well continue a while, but at some point history suggests will have had enough.  Looking at history--and imagining the future--the wheel will turn again and the women will be attacked for being liars and sluts. Some will say that had gone too far, too fast, without enough care or restraint. Revolutions bring counter-revolutions.  

We will have progress.  Men will behave better, more carefully.  Bosses will be more careful.  HR departments and in-house counsel will train people in the new rules.  Trump is a hold-over from the past.

In twenty years, long after Trump is gone, people will be ashamed of having defended Trump and Moore.  It is already happening with people who defended Bill Clinton.

They say justice demands it.

For now, men are hoping to survive the bloodletting.  Maybe the past will stay past.  At this moment it would seem Trump has the best strategy: deny and accuse.  It comes at a moral cost of knowing one is lying.  Some people cannot do it; they are too self reflective, too empathetic, to open to feeling guilt.  Trump can do it, without apparent apology.  Bill and Hillary Clinton did it, but knew they were soiling themselves, so Bill hung his head.  Trump stands tall.

Right now the period of shaming is strongest amid institutions of the left: Democrats, Hollywood, mainstream news. They feel shame. The indefensible is indefensible.  Their secular code understands guilt and the guilty are expected to pay a price.  

They are at a disadvantage.  The Christian right has the notion of sin and forgiveness. They acknowledge all fall short of the glory of God.  Christians have a path for absolving sin: Christ's sacrifice.  

The right has a goal in mind greater than the private sins of sinners. There are judicial branch appointments to fill with anti-abortion judges.  They have a higher moral purpose, saving the lives of the unborn.  God can deal with punishment in the afterlife, but for now there is a job to do: elect Republicans.  

We can close with the lyrics to Kodachrome, by Simon and Garfunkel, back when the technology was film and memories were faulty.