a small evil

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A Small Evil

It is a very difficult thing to stop an insider takeover of a government. It is evenharder, however, to UNDO an insider takeover – or any other kind – once it is

accomplished. In both instances, the conspirators have control of the machineryof government, and there are always those unquestioning ‘patriots’ who believethe lies, the propaganda, and will inform the authorities of any who question. Inboth cases, the one who calls for ‘alarums and excursions’ is labeled the traitor,and ends up having to fight the innocent ‘patriots’ who think they’re defendingtheir country. The trick of such a takeover is to convince as many groups aspossible into believing that their interests and those of the usurpers are thesame; the truth is seldom seen until too late, when the followers suddenly findthat they themselves are lumped in with all the others. By then, they wear thesame chains as all the others.

Someone always gets hurt, and not just the “bad guys”; usually it’s everyone,though the weak, the old, the very young, the poor and disabled may beespecially vulnerable. This is the price of not thinking, not observing, notknowing and not insisting on ALL of one’s own rights and those of other peoplewith the same fervor, the same vehemence. A democracy begins with knowingthat “I” have rights and what they are, and continues with knowing that in order toprotect ‘my’ rights, it is indispensable for me to protect the rights of everyone,and to act on that knowledge even in the case of the smallest attempted infraction. Wise conspirators take small steps over much time, making thechanges hard to see. This is why, however boring, eternal vigilance really IS theprice of Freedom: What we are told is a small evil, just temporary, “just for the

duration of the Emergency,” is “necessary in order to protect our Freedoms,”adds up over time to many, and soon a great many ‘small evils’, and grows to avery great Evil – the loss of all liberties. The ‘duration’ turns out to last longer and longer, until nobody asks anymore because they’ve gotten used to it, and‘temporary’ becomes forever .

There is no such thing as a ‘small Evil’; there is no such thing . A thing isEvil or it is not, and we cannot build a Good, we cannot build anything lasting, if it’s built upon Evil of any degree. This is why I say that there is no such thing asa “small evil” : each one is part and parcel of all the rest, and even that separationis an illusion. Let one in the door, so to speak, and you open that door to all of it.It’s like the camel’s nose in the Arab proverb: “If you let the camel’s nose in thetent, it is soon followed by the rest of the camel.” Just because you can’t see thewhole thing all at once, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there, that it doesn’t exist, or that you won’t find it taking over everything. It’s there, it’s real, and if you allowthe smallest increment “out of necessity” to pass without comment, you quicklyreach a point where control has passed from your hands. Closing your eyesdoes not make it go away, and trusting the words of a liar or a fool doesn’t protect



one believes it aside from the crazies. Besides, they think (and you know whatthey think, because you were one of them, once) that a ‘small evil’ in the name of defending all they hold dear is tolerable. It doesn’t seem so small from theviewpoint of a waterboard, though. It sounded so harmless, there at home on thecomputer – obviously written by crazies; people only think they’re drowning.

Maybe then you remember that the Nuremberg trials called it torture. Andincidentally, the victims of waterboarding are drowning.

Words that minimalize are used, and people just don’t think about it. They’remuch too busy with other ‘small evils’, trying to keep their families fed, their children educated, a roof over their heads. As the saying goes, a hungry man isno philosopher, and much of the country is country for something: food, jobsecurity, housing – something. It’s just too distracting to think of someone theydon’t even know being abused someplace where he or she can’t be seen. Theymay wonder why times are so hard, why husband and wife must work full time,their benefits in danger, maybe even the jobs in danger, and then they have to

listen to the leaders say what a great economy it is and how well it’s doing. Mostthink they just happen to have jobs in areas where there’s a problem, but theleaders say the rest of the country is doing well. It’s just their bad luck, theythink. They have no time for conspiracy theories. If they just change jobs –thought they’re very hard to find right now – if they just do something different,maybe win the lottery, maybe just get lucky some other way, then they might getto be one of those who have total security because they have the resources thatwould take care of a hundred, of tens of thousands of families, all for themselvesand their loved ones. They never consider that such people are taking up suchresources because those hundreds or thousands of families are robbed of them.

After all, this is America, where we’re all Free, and we all have a chance tobecome rich, pampered, with all the world open to us – or at least well off. Thosesavages (that’s what our leaders say they are, sometimes in so many words,sometimes not) who are selfishly keeping the oil and other things we need fromus are to blame. They are terrorists worshipping a strange God whose priests(they even have a strange word for that – it sounds like baby talk, this word‘imam’) tell them to come here and kill; they are to blame. If we just work hardenough, trust our leaders and be patient, it will all come together. They’ll takecare of us. Stolen elections? Not here, not in our country. That kind of thingonly happens in Third World countries, as does torture. If some of the innocentsavages die, well, as our leaders say, it’s unavoidable ‘collateral damage’; it can’tbe helped. We have to defend ourselves first, don’t we? And if a few mistakesare made and innocents suffer, that’s only human; we’re only human.

Our leaders say, too, that we have to silence traitors who protest, who put thegovernment down, who spread these vicious lies about what’s happening – it allonly hurts our cause. It hurts our image in the world, reduces our credibility.Freedom of Speech can’t include that. People like that deserve whatever theyget. We have to support our leadership, even when they make mistakes.



Anyone can make mistakes. We’re at war, even if the Congress never actuallydeclared war, there’s no doubt that we’re at war, and in war, people get hurt,people die. They’re protecting not just us, but our entire Way of Life.

So really, it’s all the best we can do in difficult circumstances. We can’t listen to

the crazy people with all their conspiracy theories, and even if some of what theysay is true, like torture, it’s necessary . The experts agree, according to our legally elected leaders, and they should know.

It’s a small Evil compared to what could happen, only a small Evil. Right?

Right?

Ian MacLeodVeteran, disabledDecember 7th, 2006

Oregon

a small evil

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