THAT SINKING FEELING

Come on, tell the truth.  Do you really feel like the recession's over?  Of do you feel like maybe it's over for the economists, but it isn't over for you?

If GDP is growing like they say it is, why do you feel like you're treading water?   Okay, let's be honest here.  Why do you feel like you've been treading water for years?  Or (gasp!) maybe even slipping?  And why does it seem like just about everybody you know is in the same boat as you?

There really is an answer to this.  And it's a simple, little number compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) called "Average Weekly Wages".  This little number -- almost never quoted in the press -- is the average amount people earn every week, adjusted for inflation.  And the sad truth is, according to the BLS, this number has actually gone down somewhat since Richard Nixon was in office. 

If you think that can't be true, you're right.  It's really much worse.

Because the BLS is cheating.  In order to make it look like real wages have only gone down a little bit (and do a few other things, like pumping up GDP and keeping the cost-of-living adjustments on Social Security to a minimum), instead of using a constant measure of inflation, the BLS keeps changing its methods to make it look like prices are going up less than they are.  If you calculate inflation on a constant basis, for example, applying the method the BLS used before Bill Clinton came to office, Average Weekly Wages have actually gone down more than the BLS admits.  A whole lot more.

There are a bunch of of reasons most people don't realize what's going on.   First of all, nowadays, more people in the family are working -- Mom's working, Dad's working, the kids are working -- everybody's working.  (Or anyway, they would be working, if they could find a job.)   If you add up all those jobs, it amounts to about as much as one person used to make when Tricky Dick was in office.

The second reason we don't see what's going on is that -- at least until recently -- the things we owned were going up in value, so it made us feel richer.  If we needed money -- for college, for a medical emergency, even for a vacation -- we could always borrow against the house. 

No more.

The third reason is, consumer goods have been cheap.  Why?  Well, the main reason is that the industrial revolution finally came to Asia, so hundreds of millions of Chinese, Indians, Indonesians,Vietnamese, and Malaysians have been streaming into the cities from the farms, flooding the markets with cheap labor. The result is, you can buy a suit or a sweater or a dress for less than what you paid thirty years ago, adjusted for inflation. The only problem is, the suit or the sweater or the dress has to be made in Asia.  And that means they're aren't any jobs making suits or sweaters or dresses (or toys or tools or TVs) in America anymore.  And that's one reason jobs are a problem.

Another reason we don't see what's going on is that the government and the financial media are so good at hiding the problems.  Economic statistics are now gamed to such an extent that they're nearly worthless.  By the magic of the "birth/death" model, millions of new jobs are assumed into existence on the theory that new businesses have been created, even though there is absolutely no evidence any new businesses have actually been created.  Through "hedonic adjustments", the prices of products that have actually gone up are "adjusted" to have gone down on the theory that their quality has improved.  By "geometric weighting" it is assumed that if the price of  an item goes up, people will use less of it, and therefore it's impact on inflation automatically goes down.

We hear constantly on television that Americans have the highest standard of living in the world, the best health care and so on.  So we believe it.

If you want to keep on believing it, go ahead.

It won't be true, but maybe it will help with that sinking feeling.

HEY, I KNEW THAT GUY IN HIGH SCHOOL

A friend of mine once made an offhand remark that wound up changing the way I’ve looked at people ever since.

“Everyone is someone you knew in high school,” he said.

Now there are a couple of ways you can take this, but in the context of what we were talking about at the time, I knew right away what he meant. And I had to admit, he was right.

There’s something about high school – a vulnerability, an inexperience, call it what you will. But somehow, in the light of it, all things stand revealed. In high school, nothing can be hidden, though we no doubt wish it could. Like it or not, try as you might, in the implacable judgment of yourself and your peers, you’re an open book.

That's probably why high school is the land of eternal archetypes – the jock, the cheerleader, the wannabe, the politician, the conniver, the hoodlum, the geek, the goth. The names may change, but the types sure don't. After high school we find ways to cover these things up. Speech, dress, manners, occupations, possessions. The jock goes to college and becomes a lawyer. The geek makes money and hires a personal trainer. The cheerleader divorces the jock and goes into real estate. The politician sells life insurance and takes up golf.

But the point my friend was making is that none of this matters. Underneath the carefully accumulated adult accoutrements, the archetypes aren't lost. The jock will snap wet towels in the locker room. The conniver will look for an angle. The politician will seek your vote. The cheerleader will ignore the geek. The geek will assume he’s being ignored.

When you look at people the way they were in high school, the fog of adulthood lifts, the disguises vanish, and the archetypes are once again restored.

So, what? you say. That archetype is just an idea, a category of thought.  We can always change it.  In theory, you're right.  But in the modern world, you're wrong.

In the modern world, we educate ourselves on every subject except ourselves. We never try to see ourselves as others see us, so we remain strangers to who we really are.  We get out of high school or college or post-grad and we think our education is over. We rush through life, avoiding what we’re afraid of, going after what we want. We lead unexamined lives, so when we get to the end, we haven’t changed at all. We're the same people we were in high school.



We age the way a house ages.  Year in, year out, buffeted by the seasons, we fade, become dated, lose function, get cluttered.  From time to time, we may try a makeover – change the furniture, update the kitchen, add a master suite, repaint, recarpet. But fundamentally, we’re the same – Gothic Revival, Georgian Colonial, Split-level Ranch, Mid-Century Modern.  The same old house.

That’s what my friend meant. Most people don't change.  So if you can see them the way they were in high school, the disguises will fade away and you’ll see who they are.

As you get older, this trick gets easier and easier to perform. Sometimes it requires no effort at all. You look at a person and at the same time you see someone else – call it, the “high school version”. You’ll see the whole thing – who they are, who they were, who they think they are, and what they want you to see. It’s almost embarrassing, to tell the truth.

I remember the first time I saw George Bush, I thought right away, “Hey, I knew that guy in high school.”

"Uh-oh."

THE GREAT SOCIETY

Trouble. I can feel it in my gut, and I haven’t even gotten out to the car.

Washington, D.C., June, 1968. Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis two months ago, there were riots in a bunch of cities, Washington was one of the worst. I haven’t seen the burnt out storefronts yet, but I’ve seen the video – waves of looters, kids throwing rocks, bloodied heads, cops with truncheons. It’s there in the back of my mind.

I tell myself I’m not a racist; I’m a VISTA volunteer. I tell myself I won’t have any trouble with my African-American brothers, once they realize I’m there to help. There’s nothing to worry about, I tell myself.

But the truth is, I’m scared as hell.

I count five of them. Hanging on the stoop outside the liquor store. Today you call them homies, gangstas maybe; in ‘68 you call them guys, maybe even kids. In ’68, they’re first generation, up from Carolina, probably born on a farm. They aren’t crackheads; they aren’t dusted; they aren’t stone killers. Not yet. But that doesn’t mean they won’t beat the shit out of you if things go a certain way; it doesn’t mean they aren’t packing guns.

I look at the piece of paper in my hand, even though I know the address by heart. It’s up the block, across “D” Street, and if I start over there, these guys are going to come after me for sure.

I’m thinking, “How the hell did I get myself into this?” But of course, I already know that.

* * *

One thing about politics that hasn’t changed over the last 40 years, is that the bad news always comes out on Fridays. People go out Friday night; they don’t watch the news. After that, there’s still the weekend. And by the time Monday rolls around, however bad the news is, it’s not news anymore.

That’s how it is when they announce the end of draft deferments for graduate students in the middle of the Vietnam War – they do it on a Friday. February 16, 1968, to be exact. And as planned, I don’t hear about it until I pick up a paper on Sunday afternoon.

To men who have grown up in the era of the “All-Volunteer Army” it’s hard to describe what it feels like to find out that you’re about to be drafted to fight in a war you think is stupid. Before this war is over, 58,000 U.S. soldiers will die; 150,000 will be injured; over 20,000 will be permanently disabled. A quarter million South Vietnamese troops will also die, along with over a million from the North. But worse than that all of that, an estimated TWO MILLION CIVILIANS will perish before the war is over in Vietnam. And I am certainly not eager to earn the karma for that.

Sunday night, I sit at my desk in the dorms and dash off a letter to the editor of the New York Times wondering, tongue in cheek, how the generals expect that ending graduate deferments will assist in the design of tomorrow’s weapons of mass destruction (amazingly, the letter gets published). After that, I get down to considering the options. I can move to Canada (too cold). I can go to jail (ending my legal career). Or I can look around for another deferment. This leads me to VISTA.

VISTA stands for Volunteers in Service to America – a sort of domestic Peace Corps that, in these days, sets several thousand draft deferred kids a year loose on the knotty problems of poverty, illiteracy, disease, ignorance, malnourishment, discrimination, political disenfranchisement and probably a few others I’m leaving out. The program was created in 1964 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. (A few years later, Nixon will offer the nation his own – and very different – vision of a “war on poverty,” appointing a young Don Rumsfeld to head up the Office of Economic Opportunity. I will leave you to imagine the sort of war on poverty THAT produced.)

But those days are yet to come. When I join up, the OEO is in its halcyon days, the happy home of a panoply of ambitious social efforts – Head Start, the Community Action Program, the Job Corps, Neighborhood Legal Services, and so on. All of these are part of something called “The Great Society” – a legislative agenda Lyndon Johnson has somehow managed to ram through Congress in the wake of John Kennedy’s assassination. And whether you love it or hate it, you have to admit The Great Society is a truly monumental collection of legislation.

To the Great Society program can be traced every major social, environmental and cultural initiative seen in the United States since the Great Depression. Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act, the Public Broadcasting System, National Public Radio, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Federal Truth-in-Lending Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Preservation Act – all of them are part of the Great Society.

Looking back from a distance of forty years, you have to ask yourself, what in the hell Congress has been DOING ever since then. Were the Great Society programs all America needed? Maybe we were exhausted after that. Or maybe the whole thing was a big mistake, an aberration, a brief hiccup in the relentless trend line of American social Darwinism. It’s got to be one of these things, doesn’t it?

* * *

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re still on “D” Street, figuring out how to deal with the guys outside the liquor store.

As I see it, the options are these: I can cross the street and hope to get where I need to go before the guys come after me. I can hang a U-and get the hell out of there. Or, I can get out of the car, walk down the street and see what happens.

Given the fact that I’m supposed to be living on this street for the next six weeks, avoidance isn’t really an option. I’m going to have to deal with these guys unless I cut and run altogether. And given my draft status, cutting and running isn’t going to work, either. So, I take a deep breath, get out of the car, pull my duffle bag off the passenger seat, and head down the block to start my life in the inner city.

It starts out friendly enough. “My man. How y’all doin’ today?” The Big Guy gives me a smile.

I nod. “Alright, how you doing?”

“Awright, awright.” He nods. Then, he points to my duffle bag. “Whatch’all got in there? Looks like you done held up the laundry.”

I laugh. “Yeah. Too bad the stuff I got wasn’t washed yet ….” I get an idea. “Hey, maybe you guys can help me out.” I pull a paper out of my shirt pocket and read the address off it, even though I know it by heart. “1670 D Street Southeast – you know which one that is?”

He shrugs.

“Farris house? That’s where I’m going.”

“Farris.” He repeats it doubtfully, turns to his friends. “Any you heard of Farris?

His friends all shake their heads.

“Martha and Rodney,” I point. “Should be across the street somewhere.”

The Big Guy looks at his friends. “Anybody know what this white boy talking ‘bout?”

Silence, then a little kid mumbles, “Betty’s sister.”

A moment later, another one chimes in, “Yeah, yeah, Martha. Married that fool drive the panel truck. In the tile bidness. ”

I jump in. “Right, right. Rodney. I’m going to be living with them awhile.”

“Say what?” The Big Guy cocks his head at me.

I nod. “I’m going to be living over there. A month is what they tell me. Maybe six weeks. They’re putting me up. They’re getting paid to do it. By the government.”

“Paid? By the gov’ment?” The big guy looks at me. “Shit! You pulling my leg, motherfucker!”

I shake my head. “I’m in a training program …with the government. This is where they’re putting me up.”

The Big Guy looks at his friends. “Training program, huh? What they trying to teach you, how to get a cap shot in your ass?”

Everybody seems to think this is a tremendous joke.

Actually, it seems like a joke to me, too. Hey, I’m on their side. I shrug, “Hey, I don’t know what they’re trying to teach me. All I know is it’s a ticket out of the Army, okay? They were gonna send me to Vietnam.”

“You don’t wanna go to Vietnam?” The Big Guy laughs. “Look around you, motherfucker, you on “D” Street. Pigs around here day and night, popping off they riot guns, rolling brothers didn’t do shit down the motherfucking station. You don’t got to go nowhere! Got Vietnam right here in the Nation’s Capitol!”

The Big Guy thinks a minute, shakes his head. “White boy don’t wanna go to Vietnam, so they send him down here, train with the niggers on D Street. Motherfucker, I got to be writing this shit down for my comedy routine.”

A stocky kid speaks up. “Boy here for training, we got to stomp his honky white ass, train him how things go down ‘round D Street.” Some of the others nod in agreement, but the Big Guy holds up his hand in a benign gesture.

“No, now my brother, be cool, be cool,” he says. “Any fool look at this shit got to realize there be some fundamental discrepancies involved in the motherfucker. Boy roll on in here, park up the block there, fine as you please, parade on down the street, cool as a jive ass motherfucker. Look at it, you KNOW there some facts the motherfucker not taking into consideration.” The Big Guy pauses, finally nods. “So, this being our place of business and what have you, I’m feeling it be up to us to give the boy some education, you know, ‘splain the rules of the game to the motherfucker.”

The homies start to smile, getting a sense they have an idea where this might be going. “Yeah, yeah,” they say.

The Big Guy looks at me. “You down with that?”

I nod. “Education.”

“My man.” The Big Guy pats me on the back, then puts an arm around my shoulder in friendly fashion, and turns me in the direction of my car. “See now the first thing is, you parked your car on the motherfucking STREET.”

I nod again. “I did.”

The Big Guy shakes his head gravely. “You can’t do that.”

“I can’t?”

“Use your head.” He points up the street. “Don’t you see each one of them spots on the street got a motherfucking HOUSE next to it?” I nod. “Awright, now ask yourself, if you park your motherfucking car next to that motherfucking house up there, where the motherfucker LIVE in the house gonna park HIS car?”

I smile and, in a flash of wit, point to an empty space across the street. “How about over there?”

Whap! The big guy smacks me in the back of the head, but in a friendly fashion.

“See now, that be the wrong answer, motherfucker. Looka here, say the man do park his car over there, okay? What’s gonna happen, the man live in THAT house come home? Where that motherfucker gonna park? Understand what I’m saying to you?”

This has a certain logic. “So where am I supposed to park, then?” I ask.

The Big Guy smiles benignly. “See, NOW you asking the right question. On account of, as luck would have it, that be one of the services WE providing.”

“You tell people where to park on the street.”

He nods. “Could be. But we also be taking CARE of the motherfuckers, understand what I’m saying to you? Make sure nothing happen to ‘em, vandalism, shit like that.”

I smile and nod back. “You take care of the cars.  How about the sidewalks, you take care of them, too?”

The Big Guy chuckles, turns to his friends. “Motherfucker ain’t as dumb’s he looks.” Then back to me. “Sidewalks, street corners, store fronts, alley ways – whatever the fuck going down, if it’s round D Street, we take care of it. . … Understand what I’m saying to you?”

Anyone who thinks the entrepreneurial spirit is not alive and well in the ghetto has never spent any time there. The truth is, the ghetto is every bit as entrepreneurial as Wall Street. The only difference is, the folks in the ghetto don’t get to make up the rules that govern their behavior. If they made up the rules like they do on Wall Street, things would go a lot better for them.

So I’m thinking, “I understand what you’re saying, alright. An economic exchange. You provide the protection, and you want me to pay for it.” And I can tell you, standing there on the street corner trying to hold on to my draft deferment, the deal he’s offering looks like a lot more attractive than the one I’m getting from the government.

* * *

For the most part, my days in Washington are spent trudging around public housing projects in unrelenting heat, trying to get people to tell me how shitty their living conditions are. This is in support of a lawsuit the local Neighborhood Legal Services office is going to bring against the National Capital Housing Authority. The lawsuit will claim the Housing Authority is failing to provide “decent, safe and sanitary housing”, as required by the National Housing Act. The Authority will claim it’s doing what it can within the constraints of its budget.

As we work our way through the housing projects, most times no one answers the door. Or if someone does answer, it’s a kid, barely old enough to talk. The kid tells us no, Mama ain’t home and unh-uh, I don’t know where she is, or when she’ll be coming. It doesn’t take long before we begin to suspect that Mama actually is home, but there’s nothing she’s willing to tell us.

At first, I can’t understand why it’s so hard getting these people to talk. Then, one time, an old, hard-eyed woman indulges me.

“Lemme see if I understand this, she says. “You saying the GOV’MENT ain’t going by the law ….”

“That’s right, Ma’am.”

“And you bringing a law suit gonna MAKE the gov’ment go by the law?”

I nod. “Right again.”

She shakes her head. “God DAMN, boy,” she says. “What make you think the gov’ment gonna go by the law AFTER the law suit, when it ain’t gone by the law to begin with?”

In the evenings, we have classes conducted by people introduced to us as “community organizers”. These people do not look like hippies. They do not sport bell bottom pants. They pride themselves on looking ordinary. They mistrust theory. If they quote at all, it is from Saul Alinsky. They tell gritty stories about civil rights marches and voter registration drives and union elections and their stories are more cautionary than uplifting, floating in an irony as thick as the smoke from their unfiltered cigarettes.

Despite their passion, it is hard to understand what these people believe in. They see judges as asses and politicians as crooks. They see reporters as lazy, their editors as pawns, and their readers as fools. They say they want to give power to the people, but I cannot figure out exactly which people they have in mind. But the thing I wonder about most of all, is how these people managed to get the United States government to pay them to share with us their revolutionary vision.

In America, I think, even the revolutionaries are entrepreneurs.

After the meetings, I return to the airless, little row house on D Street that has become my temporary home – the house where I was going when I ran into the Big Guy and his fellow entrepreneurs.

The house is owned by a wiry, mean spirited little tile installer by the name of Rodney Farris.  Rodney lives with his wife, Martha, and three small children – a son he has fathered (and dotes upon), and two daughters that Martha has borne prior to their marriage (and whom Rodney tolerates at best). Relations in the family are strained. Even in front of strangers, Rodney never tires of reminding Martha how he “picked her up out of the gutter” and “got her off of welfare.” Somewhere in this reminder, there is usually a comparison of Martha with her sister, Betty, whom Rodney regards as a whore.

As it happens, Martha's sister, Betty Thomas, lives half a block up D Street, almost exactly across the street from where I first parked my car. Most of the houses on D Street are, like Rodney’s, narrow two-story brick affairs with featureless facades and cement steps. But Betty Thomas’s house is an exception. It’s a rambling old clapboard place, with innumerable bedrooms and a wide wooden porch that serves as a kind of meeting place for the neighborhood. Betty, herself a wide-hipped, welcoming woman, lives in the house with her mother (universally called Mama), her brother, James, and a rainbow coalition of thirteen children who, Betty proudly tells you, have almost as many fathers. “And Sharonda, here? her daddy is a sailor from the PHILIPPINES!” (There are also an indeterminate number of cats.)

Today, Betty would be considered a walking advertisement for welfare reform. In 1968, she is considered a victim. To me, she is just another entrepreneur.

For those who don’t remember, in the days prior to Clinton’s welfare reforms, the dominant form of federal assistance is called AFDC, which stands for Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The idea behind the program is to provide support for CHILDREN whose families have little or no income. In theory, the benefit goes to the CHILDREN. (After all, it isn’t their fault their parents are poor). In practice, however, it’s the MOTHER who receives the payment. This is where the problems come in.

First of all, it is the nature of the system that the more children a mother has, the more money comes in the door. Since there’s no expectation in 1968 that a mother with young children should work, the program creates an incentive to keep having children so that some of them will always be young. As an entrepreneur, Betty understands this, and she produces the commodity the government will pay her to produce. (Don’t get me wrong, Betty loves kids (she also loves men) so this is an incentive she is not only willing, but extremely happy to exploit.)

The second problem with AFDC is, since the MOTHER gets the money, it isn’t a sure thing she’ll actually spend it on the CHILDREN. She may, for example, spend it on a new dress or a TV set. To prevent this from happening, a caseworker is assigned to check up on her. But if the mother buys the TV anyway (as Betty once did), and the children don’t have winter coats as a result of it, there isn’t much anybody can do but give the family a special needs grant for the coats. As an entrepreneur, Betty understands this, of course.

The nature of AFDC is that you can only receive assistance if you don’t have income. If there’s a man living in the house, there’s an assumption that the man is (or should be) working, and therefore if a welfare inspector happens to drop by at, say, three or four in the morning, and finds a man in the house, your benefits get cut off. This so-called “man in the house rule” creates one-parent families almost as an instrument of federal policy. The intelligent ability to adapt to government regulations is apparently lost on the people who write them. But it is not lost on Betty. The only man a welfare inspector will find in her house is Betty’s brother, James, who has managed to get himself on disability. As those who have read thus far may suspect, James is also an entrepreneur.

James is bright, engaging and funny, but he never seems to have much to do. The reason, of course, is that if you’re on disability, you’re not allowed to work. After all, if you can work, then you’re not disabled, right?

There’s a saying around the neighborhood, “The eagle shits on Friday.” As I quickly learn, this does not refer to the government’s propensity to announce bad news on Fridays, but rather, the fact that this is the day the government checks come out. Even though public assistance is money for nothing, nobody is overjoyed living on these checks. Welfare is something you can get by on, but you can’t get ahead. The only way you can do that is pimp whores or run drugs.

One time I ask James if he wouldn’t be better off getting a job. He looks at me like I’ve got a disability of my own. “Job?” he says, “What kinda job they gonna give me? Parking cars? Running a elevator up and down someplace?”

“No, no,” I say. “You’re a smart guy. You could get something better than that.”

He looks at me. “With a criminal record?”

I don’t have a comeback for that, so I ask him. “What did you do?”

“What’d I do?” He laughs. “What’d anybody do?” He motions vaguely. “Look around, man. Everybody round here been to jail for one thing or another.”

Actually, this is true. Rumor has it, even Rodney was in jail for stabbing a man in Carolina before he started his tile business. The way James sees it, he produces what the system pays him to produce – in his case, that happens to be a disability.

* * *

As I think about all this at the time, I conclude that I am also an entrepreneur -- selling what it is I have to sell for the best price I can get in the marketplace. Certainly, an impartial observer looking at my situation would have to say, my motive for engaging in social service is perhaps somewhat less than pure.

I think of classes in the drafty caverns of Harvard Law – purgatories where students are called upon to state abstruse appellate cases before hundreds of their peers while quick witted professors do their best to convince the assembled multitude that they are fools. Whatever principle the student says the case represents, the professor suggests it is something else. If the student says the case is right, the professor shows why it might also be wrong. If the student asserts the case is consistent with prior authority, the professor demonstrates it almost certainly is not. Or, for variety, he might tell the student to take a seat and call on someone else. In this process, the only sure thing is that an answer will never given.

At some point, it occurs to me that the goal of this Socratic process is to teach the student that in the practice of law, there are no answers. There is no right and wrong. There are only good and bad arguments. And as I think about this, the most disturbing part is not that students are terrorized and bullied; it is not that their self-esteem is placed under constant assault; it is that virtually no one involved in the process seems to care about the fundamental question – how a system that rewards the ability to argue either side of an issue without troubling itself about right or wrong can be justified on moral grounds.

And I begin to think that America has the best legal system money can buy. Later, I realize it also has the best political system money can buy and the best medical system money can buy. I realize that in America, you get what you pay for. Money is not only a medium of exchange or a store of value. Money is an expression of American freedom. This is what has become of the pursuit of happiness.

* * *

A lot of people will wind up getting shot in 1968 – Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Andy Warhol, not to mention the entire population of My Lai Village No. 4.

The only one who will not die is Andy Warhol. 1968 is that kind of year.

Standing there with the Big Guy and his buddies, I can’t help thinking how easy it would be to reach in my pocket and give these guys my money. The problem is, I know economics. If I give them my money, I’ll be creating the wrong incentive. If I give them money, they’ll shake me down every time they see me on the street. Sooner or later, I’ll have to say no. And when I do, it’ll go harder.

So I tell them the truth (something the system never tells them). “Look,” I say. “I’m gonna be living here. How am I gonna pay you guys every time I walk down the street?”

“How about we pop a cap in your ass right now, then see how you gonna walk down the street,” the stocky kid says.

The Big Guy looks annoyed. “Jo-Jo, you pop a cap in somebody’s ass, you gonna do it when I tell you to.”

The stocky kid gives the Big Guy a look, but he doesn’t say anything.

Finally. the Big Guy turns to me. He smiles a friendly smile, takes me aside. “I tell you what,” he says. “How about you pay this time, twenty dollars, we call it even.”

This is tempting. I take a minute to think about it, but I finally shake my head. “I wish I could do that,” I say, “but there isn’t any ‘one time’ and we both know it.” Then I say, louder, so his friends can hear. “Look, man, this is your place. I understand that. But like I said, I got no money and I got to get down the street. So this one time, I’m gonna ask you to let me go.”

We look at each other, the Big Guy and I, neither one saying anything. Finally, I pick up my duffle bag and start walking.

When I’ve taken maybe five steps, The Big Guy calls out behind me, “Nobody gonna be looking out after your car, now you understand that.”

I stop, turn around, and smile. “Yeah. But I figure you’re the man. And nobody on this block can touch that car without your permission.”

The Big Guy folds his arms, then he shakes his head, smiles. “You taking money out my pocket, motherfucker.”

“I’m just asking.”

He nods, turns away, then turns back again. “What kind of program you say you was with, anyway?”

“Called VISTA,” I say. “But I’m working with Neighborhood Legal Services.”

“So you a lawyer.”

“Trying to be.”

He shakes his head, laughs. “Motherfucker! I shoulda KNOWED that.” He points at me. “You owe me one.”

* * *

The set-up in America is – and from what I can tell, always has been – that people fall into two main categories: the ones who beat the system, and the ones who get beat. Laissez faire plus human nature doesn’t leave room for anything much in between.

Viewed in hindsight, the Great Society was a fleeting experiment that even its intended beneficiaries viewed with a measure of scorn. To those of us who worked in the trenches, its greatest utility was probably the unique excuse it gave us to look the other way. After all, the Great Society didn’t create a great society, did it?. We still had poverty; we still had crime; we still had injustice. The economic class system remained.

Only our idealism was lost.

As hippies became yuppies, the charm of voodoo economics took hold. Regulations were gutted, criminal penalties were toughened, and, oh yeah, welfare was reformed.

When I look back on those days, I can’t help but think the Great Society really was an aberration. We Americans don’t believe in collective responsibility. In fact, we have a problem with any sort of responsibility at all. Look at our heroes. They aren’t Albert Schweitzer and Mahatma Gandhi. They’re Bonnie and Clyde and the Godfather. They’re not Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. They’re Dillinger, The Notorious B.I.G. and Al Capone. We’d give a hundred Sergeant Preston’s for a single Dirty Harry. We don’t like the cops from Internal Affairs Division. We like the ones who break the rules and get thrown off the force.

We’re Americans. We like the tough guy, the hard ass, the gangster, the wise guy. We like the gambler and the con man.

We like the entrepreneur.

DEMISE OF THE DOLLAR

In a country like America, where all sorts of consumer goods are imported, the standard of living depends to a considerable extent on the relative value of the dollar. If that value were to fall, then even in the midst of a recession with high unemployment, inflation would quickly break out, causing a decline in the standard of living.

This is exactly what is going to happen. (It is also why economists who fear deflation get it wrong.)

In general, the value of a currency is governed by the law of supply and demand. Given a fixed supply, increased demand means increased value (and vice versa). In the days before global capital markets, demand for a currency was determined by the flow of international trade.

Countries and their citizens are required to buy foreign exchange in order to pay for things they purchase abroad, so the level of imports from one country to another, relative to the level of its exports, tends to determine the relative value of the two currencies. In this system, any temporary imbalance tends to be self-correcting. As the value of one currency goes up relative to another, it becomes cheaper to buy abroad with the appreciated currency. This increases the level of imports which, over time, causes the value of the importing nation’s currency to decline relative to the exporting nation’s, so that balance is restored.

So why hasn’t that happened in the case of America?

With the advent of global capital markets, a new wrinkle was added. Currency began to be purchased not only for use in trade, but also for use in investment. When this occurred, the relative attractiveness of investment opportunities, as well as the relative attractiveness of goods, became a factor in determining currency values. This meant that a whole range of new factors – interest rates, wage rates, governmental regulations, political stability, rates of growth in the economy – became relevant to currency values.

Still, in theory, relative currency values in a global capital market environment should remain self-correcting because, as capital flows into a nation in search of investment opportunities, interest rates in that nation will tend to come down and, over time, the best investment opportunities will be gone, leaving opportunities that are less attractive. When that happens, capital should move elsewhere, causing the relative value of the currency to decline.

To some degree this has occurred but not nearly to the degree that might be expected. So again, why don’t the laws of supply and demand seem to work in the case of the American currency?

The first reason is that since the second World War, the dollar has been the functioning international reserve currency, and this has increased the demand for dollars.

In the era of fiat currencies, world monetary reserves are held not primarily in precious metals, but in the obligations of foreign governments. (If anything, this trend accelerated after 1999, when the world’s central banks began selling gold to try to earn a return on their foreign exchange assets.) As mentioned, since World War II, the primary reserve currency has been the U.S. dollar, so the net effect of the fiat currency regime has been to add a major new component to the demand for dollars. In essence, the switch from gold to dollars has meant that as the global economy has expanded, the demand for dollars has expanded along with it – quite independently of any demand for U.S. goods or U.S. investment opportunities.

For decades, the reserve currency mechanism has had the effect of increasing the value of the dollar in a way that was not self-correcting. In other words, as the value of the dollar rose, it did not matter that U.S. investments were becoming less attractive or that U.S. goods were becoming prohibitively expensive. U.S. dollars weren’t being purchased for purposes of trade or investment. They were being purchased as a store of value, and as the value of the dollar increased, dollars actually appeared more attractive as a store of value, rather than less so.

The second reason the dollar remains over-valued in terms of its purchasing power is that it is in the interest of some of America’s major trading partners that it remain that way. A number of counties – most notably China, but also to some extent, Japan, Korea, and others – actively intervene in the markets to keep their currencies at a fixed level or range or value relative to the dollar. As a rule, this means that they sell their own currencies and buy dollars in order to prevent their own currencies from rising. The purpose, of course, it to keep the dollar price of their exports attractive.

Like the support provided to the dollar by its role as an international reserve currency, the support provided by foreign government intervention is not in any way self-correcting (though one has to assume there is some limit to how many dollars the Chinese are really willing to own). Since the mechanisms are not self-correcting, they can go on, and have gone on, for substantial periods of time. This has resulted in some other imbalances that have had – and will have – very serious consequences in the future. One in particular is the production (and price) of raw materials.

Regardless of where they are produced and the currency in which the costs of production are paid, most raw materials and energy products are priced in dollars. As the dollar is, and for decades has been, overpriced in terms of most other currencies, the value received by raw materials and energy producers measured in terms of their domestic currencies, is, and for decades has been, artificially low. This has created a natural reticence to invest in productive infrastructure, with the result that this infrastructure is now getting old. Expenditure for exploration and development of new resources has also been held back, resulting in flat to declining productive capacity.

Before the crash of 2008, demand from China, India and other fast-growing economies for raw materials and energy put tremendous upward pressure on prices. The crash of 2008 resulted in a precipitous decline in prices, but these have since rebounded, and as the global economy recovers, upward pressure is sure to return, because only an increase in prices will bring about the increased supply demanded in the market.

So, let’s recap. On the demand side, we know that American exports cannot compete in global markets with the dollar at current levels. We know that real U.S. interest rates are now negative; and we know that returns on corporate stocks were essentially zero in the decade that has just ended. While the dollar still functions as the world’s reserve currency, we know that the aggregate global economy is scarcely growing; and we know that the nations with growing economies that are all talking about diversifying their reserve assets away from the dollar. We know that China is hoarding domestically produced gold rather than selling it; we know that India is buying gold from the IMF; and we know that the European Central banks have slowed their gold sales almost to zero.

None of these factors is positive for dollar demand.

As far as supply is concerned, we know that given a fixed demand for a currency, increased supply means decreased value. So, what about supply? Since August 2008, the monetary base in the United States has more than doubled, to just over $2 trillion. While the Fed has attempted to “sanitize” this money by paying interest on excess bank reserves, the money has not been removed from the system, nor can it be removed without damaging of the banking system liquidity.

Putting all this together, it looks like a recipe for a declining dollar and a serious bout of inflation.

END OF PAX AMERICANA

It’s hard to watch what’s going on in America today without thinking of Rome.

Watching the Superbowl, it’s hard not to picture gladiators in the Coliseum. Injured warriors carted to the locker room on motorized gurneys while women in revealing outfits lead the cheers.

Junk culture, mindless violence, torture as entertainment, necklines plunging, obesity soaring, gangster children, families under financial siege.

Military tasks outsourced to business corporations. Weapons delivered to enemies. Blackwater protecting the State Department. You have to ask, how is Blackwater different from the Praetorian guards?

Democracy perverted, endemic corruption in a plutocratic state. Cooperation unheard of, fundamental problems ignored, glossed over, or kicked down the road.

Like the Romans, U.S. politicians have discovered the dole. The nation is in debt to anyone willing to lend, but as even the Chinese are beginning to realize, the debt will never be repaid. Inflation is coming. The standard of living is declining. The Pax Americana is over. The United States has had it’s day.

The U.S. Senate could just as well be sitting in Rome.

Times are changing. Populations are in motion. White anger increases as white hegemony erodes. Terrorists blow up markets and hotels and airplanes. Look a little like the Germanic migrations, no? The barbarians nibbling at the edges of the Empire? The Angles and Saxons and the Vandals and the Goths?

When the history books are written, they’ll say there were many reasons for what happened to America. They’ll point out that American supremacy was an accident of history to begin with; that the United States was the only major nation to emerge from World War II unscathed; that Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and Japanese reconstruction created a highly favorable currency regime and trading environment. They’ll point out that this environment was bound to change as global industrialization occurred. Indeed, they’ll say the system had come under strain as early as 1971, when Nixon was forced to close the gold window, and America started printing fiat money without inherent value.

My guess is, they’ll date the beginning of the decline to the War in Vietnam.

Vietnam will be seen as important not for its own sake, but as the hallmark of a wearying series of military engagements that divided the nation and drained it of blood and treasure. These wars will be seen as a sign of hubris, of the arrogance of power, of a mercantile society’s desire to control raw materials, of a consumer society’s addiction to possessions, of a conqueror’s fear of uprising, of a military’s insatiable need for control. With the benefit of hindsight, these wars will be seen as a monumental waste; as a squandering of the nation’s potential, as a series of misguided adventures that ultimately resulted in no gain at all. They will probably also be seen as inevitable.

There are a lot of theories about why Rome fell. Some, like Toynbee and Burke, say the empire was rotten to begin with, based on plunder rather than production. They say that it was doomed to fall after it ceased to expand militarily. J.B. Bury also points to military factors – the decline of the citizen soldier and the enrollment in the army of large numbers of undependable barbarians. Radovan Richta contends the invention of the horseshoe in Germania in the 200s fundamentally altered the balance of military power in favor of the barbarians and away from Rome.

Other historians, like Vegetius, point to economics. The Empire was overextended, they say. The enormous budgets necessary to maintain the roads and the aqueducts and the bureaucracy and the armies required that taxes be raised to such an extent that land was eventually driven out of cultivation, causing a decline in agricultural production. Even then, Ludwig von Mises points out, tax revenues became inadequate, so the Empire was forced to debase its currency, resulting in rampant inflation.

Still other historians, like Edward Gibbon, point to issues of morality. Gibbon, who wrote what is probably the most famous book on the subject (published, appropriately enough, in 1776), lumped the qualities necessary to sustain a society under the heading, “civic virtue.” He believed that the decline of the Roman Empire was ultimately a result, not so much of the particular challenges the society faced, as of a decline in the values on which it was founded. In his opinion, it was the decline in these “civic virtues” that ultimately resulted in the fall of Rome.

Hard work, self-control, fair play, bravery, charity, personal responsibility, respect for the rights of others – these are the values on which the United States was founded.

So what happened, America?

THE MECHANISM OF GOOD

In his Autobiography, the yoga master, Paramahansa Yogananda, recounts a story from his childhood about a rare disagreement between his mother and father. The story is best told in his own words:

“Please give me ten rupees for a hapless woman who has just arrived at the house.” Mother’s smile had its own persuasion.

“Why ten rupees? One is enough.” Father added a justification: “When my father and grandparents died suddenly, I had my first experience of poverty. My only breakfast, before walking miles to my school, was a small banana. Later, at the university, I was in such need that I applied to a wealthy judge for aid of one rupee per month. He declined, remarking that even a rupee is important."

“How bitterly you recall the denial of that rupee!” Mother’s heart had an instant logic. “Do you want this woman also to remember painfully your refusal of ten rupees, which she needs urgently?”

Not surprisingly, Yogananda’s father gave in.

I have written about the mechanism of evil, which is to deny responsibility for the pain and failure that come to us in life, assume the identity of victim, and project the responsibility and blame onto an oppressor who becomes our embodiment of evil. Our sense of victimhood and lack of responsibility allows us to "justify" our own violence and evil, which is to say it is "just" under the circumstances. Yogananda's story demonstrates that mechanism, but it also demonstrates the mechanism of goodness.

The mechanism of goodness begins with an acceptance of whatever comes to us in life. This is easiest to do when we understand that the law of cause and effect extends to human actions, and that all of our experiences are the effects of past causes – whether in this life, or in some other. If one does not accept this, it is extremely difficult to avoid feeling that one is a victim of an unjust world. If one feels the world is unjust, one cannot really feel that God is just. And one cannot feel either secure or loved if one is fundamentally alienated from God.

A curious corollary of “victimhood”, is that it tends to focus the entire attention of the “victim" on him or herself – his or her suffering, the injustice that has been visited upon him or her, the unfairness of his or her situation. Completely self-focused, the “victim” is unaware of his or her effects on others, and also to their suffering.

This is well demonstrated in Yogananda’s story. Though his father had a vivid memory of how he felt at having his request for a rupee denied by the judge, he was more than willing to deny the request for ten rupees of the woman at the door. I call this mechanism the “law of equal suffering.” I went through it, so why shouldn't you? The “equal suffering” principle is widespread, as any army private, law firm associate or resident physician will attest. However it may be justified by its practitioners, the fact is, it is retribution and nothing else.

The mechanism of goodness is quite the reverse. Rather than focusing on oneself as the victim of past suffering, it focuses on the one who is suffering in the present. Rather than requiring equal suffering of one’s fellowman, it seeks to avoid it. “Given that I know what it feels like to suffer, I will do what I can so that others do not have to suffer.” This is empathy. And its application can truly change the world.

Empathy was perhaps most famously expressed by Jesus on the cross: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” In the extremity of dying, he thought not of himself, but of his murderers. Every Christian knows these words, but most feel it is beyond them to practice. “Christ was divine,” they would say. “But we are human.” But those who would say this are not truly Christians, for they are ignoring the words of Christ spoken at the Last Supper.

“This is my commandment,” he said, “That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”

THE MECHANISM OF EVIL

On June 5, 2009, President Obama visited the site of the infamous Nazi death camp at Buchenwald. With him were German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and well-known Holocaust survivor, Elie Weisel. Following the visit, all three made public remarks.

In her remarks, Chancellor Merkel described the “horror and shock” she felt at the camp's atrocities. “We, the Germans,” she said, “are faced with the agonizing question how and why – how could this happen? How could Germany wreak such havoc in Europe and the world?”

However, Ms Merkel suggested no answer to the question. Rather, she seemed content with the idea that the act of remembrance, in itself, somehow guards against the repetition of evil.

“[L]et me emphasize, we Germans see it as part of our country's raison d'être to keep the everlasting memory alive of the break with civilization that was the Shoah. Only in this way will we be able to shape our future.”

Elie Weisel saw a similar value in remembering the Holocaust, but his outlook was darker. Referring to his father, who died at Buchenwald, he said, “I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I will speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will [but]…. What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure …. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.”

In his remarks, Obama also repeated the refrain of remembrance. He referred to a great uncle who had been among the American forces that liberated Buchenwald, and “returned from his service in a state of shock, saying little and isolating himself for months.”

Obama spoke of Eisenhower’s intuitive understanding that people would be reluctant to confront the horror of what had occurred. “[T]hat’s why he ordered American troops and Germans from the nearby town to tour the camp. He invited congressmen and journalists to bear witness and ordered photographs and films to be made. And he insisted on viewing every corner of these camps so that -- and I quote -- he could ‘be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever in the future there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.’”

Obama went on to speak of the good that occurred at Buchenwald, the risks prisoners took and the sacrifices they made for each other. Then he said something else.

What he said was not picked up in the press or replayed on the nightly news or even taken out of context and debated to death by the talking heads on cable. It was one unelaborated sentence. But when I heard it, I was thunderstruck. Because in a few short words, he identified the REAL value of remembering the Holocaust. He said: “[J]ust as we identify with the victims, it is also important for us, I think, to remember that the perpetrators of such evil were human as well, and that we have to guard against cruelty in ourselves."

In other words, Obama was suggesting that the lesson of the Holocaust is not the “human capacity for evil” in some abstract sense. Rather, it is for us to reflect upon our OWN capacity for evil. Until we have done that, until we have seen and understood the source of evil within ourselves, that evil will be repeated.

* * *

The 1920s was a time of prosperity in the United States, but it was not so in Germany. Germany had lost World War I and, under the Treaty of Versailles, had been forced to accept responsibility “for all loss and damage” suffered by the allies. As a result, it was required to pay reparations. Initially, these were set at 269 billion gold marks, or about $382 billion in current dollars, and it was demanded that this sum be paid in annual installments over about 60 years, in gold. Within a year, the mark declined from 60 to the dollar to 8000 to the dollar, as the government printed money in an attempt to pay the debt. In a period of 6 months, between June and December, 1923, the German cost of living increased 1600%.

Despite what it said in the Versailles Treaty, the German people never accepted responsibility for World War I. In fact, many weren’t even convinced they had lost it. Since they didn’t feel they were at fault for their situation, when the hyperinflation came, they needed someone to blame. This turned out to be the government, the bankers, and the speculators. Many in the latter two groups were Jews.

Historically, the Jews had been barred from owning land in Europe, so they tended to engage in commerce and hold their wealth in precious gems and gold. (Reflected in common Jewish names like Gold, Silver, Pearl, Diamond, Ruby and various offshoots). At the same time, Christians were barred by the Church from lending money at interest. This combination of factors lead to the rise of Jews in the banking sector. Fortunately – or perhaps ultimately, as it turned out, unfortunately – gold and jewels don’t lose value in a hyperinflationary environment, while government bonds do. As a result, the German hyperinflation in the 1920s made the Jews wealthier than ever relative to the general population. This situation fueled the rise of anti-Semitism, and contributed to the rise of its chief proponent, Adolph Hitler. By the time of the German defeat in 1945, six million Jews, or about 72% of the Jewish population, had been murdered.

Soviet forces were the first to liberate a major Nazi death camp, reaching Majdanek, Poland, in July 1944. In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also overran the Bellzec, Sobibor and Treblinka death camps.

In January, 1945, the Soviets liberated largest camp of all -- Auschwitz. The Nazis had previously forced the majority of the prisoners to march away from the advancing Soviet troops (the so-called “death marches”), and Soviet soldiers found only several thousand emaciated prisoners alive when they entered the camp. But there was abundant evidence of mass murder. The retreating Germans had destroyed most of the warehouses, but in the remaining ones the Soviets found hundreds of thousands of men’s suits, more than 800,000 women’s outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.

Nevertheless, the discovery of these horrors did not end anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.

Anti-Semitism and attacks against Jews occurred in Eastern Europe through the 1940s and 1950s. A pogrom organized by the secret police in Kielce, Poland in 1946, resulted in the death of 42 Jews and the injury of 40 others out of a population of 200. The perpetrators of the attack were Catholics, who had, themselves, been persecuted by the Nazis.

Soviet anti-Semitism is well documented, even though the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, and even though the Soviets suffered greater casualties than any other nation in the war – 23 million people, including over 11 million civilians.

Did these people learn anything at all?

The Zionist movement, seeking “to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law” got started in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. At the time, Palestine was ruled by the Ottomans, who were less than enthusiastic about a group of European Jews making trouble among the local Arabs.

During World War I, The British needed Jewish financial support in their fight against the Germans. This lead to the adoption of a declaration stating that the British Government “views with favor the establishment of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.” The Balfour Declaration, as it was called, was formally endorsed by the League of Nations after the end of the war, but nothing was done to implement it.

As Jews drifted into Palestine over the next several decades, they were met with a series of riots among local Arabs. The British, who had been given the mandate to rule Palestine by the League of Nations, saw their financial interests more closely allied with the Arabs, as oil was developed in the region. Finding the Balfour Declaration an inconvenience, the British ignored it. Jewish immigration to Palestine was sharply curtailed under the so-called 1939 White Paper, and in March, 1940, the British High Commissioner for Palestine issued an edict banning Jews from purchasing land in 95% of region.

After the end of the second World War, some suggested that British restrictions on Jewish migration to Palestine had contributed to the loss of life in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the British continued to thwart it, imprisoning attempted immigrants at prison camps on the Island of Cyprus.

Meanwhile, several groups of Jews who had made it to Palestine formed armed militias. Fed up with British intrigue and intransigence, they undertook a program of armed resistance. This took the form of kidnappings, acts of sabotage and bombings – the most infamous of which occurred in 1946, when the Irgun bombed British Headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. 92 people died, most of them civilians.

Many of the Jewish terrorists – it is hard to see why the term doe not apply – were victims of Nazi atrocities. A great majority of these men had relatives who died in the camps; some were survivors themselves.

What had these people learned?

Ultimately, it was not Jewish terrorism that lead to the creation of a Jewish homeland, but the negative publicity generated by the heavy-handed British attempts to halt Jewish migration. In the U.S., this publicity led to a Congressional delay in granting Britain desperately needed economic aid. Caught between the U.S. Congress and its Arab allies, which continued to oppose a Jewish homeland, Britain finally decided the best course was to wash its hands of the issue and refer it for resolution to the United Nations.

In November, 1947 a General Assembly resolution called for the evacuation of the British and the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish sectors. On May 14, 1948, the last British forces left Haifa, and the creation of an Israeli State was declared.

But the creation of an ethnically-defined state required that those who were not of that ethnicity be removed.

War between Palestinian Arabs and Jews broke out as soon as the General Assembly resolution was passed. Following declaration of the Israeli state, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq declared war. Saudi-Arabia and Sudan also sent forces to participate in the invasion. But at the same time, Jews were streaming into Palestine in increasing numbers from the battlefields of Europe. Ultimately, the tide turned and the Arab forces were defeated. In March 1949, a permanent cease fire went into effect and two months later, Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations.

By that time, over 700,000 Palestinians had moved out of Israeli-controlled territory according to United Nations statistics. How many left voluntarily and how many were forcibly evicted will never be known.

The Jews did not start the 1948 war with the Arabs, but they were not forgiving victors.

“Never Again” has become something of a rallying cry for many Jews since the Holocaust. Indeed, it is the official slogan of the militant Jewish Defense League. But what does it mean? Does it mean that the Jews will never again tolerate behavior among themselves that is reminiscent of the Nazis? Not at all. Rather – as explained on the JDL website – “Never Again means first and foremost that Jews will never again go quietly and submissively to our deaths. … JDL upholds … all necessary means – strength, force and even violence as a last resort.” So, in other words, the learned is not the necessity of treating other people with humanity, but the necessity of fighting against others people’s inhumanity.

This is not much of a lesson.

Since the declaration of the State of Israel, the Jews and the Arabs have fought four major wars and have lived in a constant cycle of attack, reprisal and belligerence.

This is not to blame the Jews. In human affairs, their behavior has been the rule, not the exception. What the Israelis have done is no different from what the Pasestinians have done. What Bin Laden has done is no different from what George Bush has done and none of it is different from what the Nazis have done.

Rather than taking responsibility for what life has brought to them, rather than trying to deal with life constructively, all of them took the easy course. They took the course that requires no introspection, no self-analysis, and no humility. They saw themselves as victims and others as oppressors. They saw themselves as right and others as wrong. Rather than understanding their own capacity for evil, they externalized that evil and projected it onto someone else.

This is the fundamental mechanism of evil. This is how evil reproduces itself.