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Book Discussion: The Plague, by Albert Camus. Translated by Laura Marris

Introduction

Have you ever found a situation, piece of information, or something else in your life to be equally comforting and depressing? It’s an odd feeling, comfort and depression sound like they should be mutually exclusive emotions. However, the more I’ve learned about history and the past has shown me that these two emotions can coexist quite happily together. Reading The Plague by Albert Camus produced the same feeling of comfort and depression in me. The Plague tells a fictional story set in the real city of Oran in Algeria, set sometime in the 1940s. The book was originally released in 1947, and it is a fascinating exploration of how the people of Oran react to a citywide quarantine as the bubonic plague methodically sweeps the city. 

The Plague could have been written in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. It could be written in the wake of all the pandemics that have yet to happen. Camus’ work has lost none of its relevance since it was published in 1947. On the one hand, there is some comfort to be found in knowing that people of the past have had to deal with similar trials, and suffered many of the same tragedies. The entire history of our species is inextricably linked with disease. Sometimes those diseases are ever present, but low level killers. Other times a pathogen fells half a population in a year or two. Yet despite this specter constantly haunting our collective existence, humanity has persisted. Even in the wake of unimaginable tragedy people find a way to pick up the pieces and persist. There is something to admire in that tenacity against futility. On the other hand, it’s unsettling to recognize that people have always had the same irrational, unhelpful, or even harmful coping mechanisms to deal with wide scale disease outbreaks. Intellectually and philosophically speaking, humanity appears to be stuck running on a treadmill. We’re running really fast, but not moving forward. The Plague is a work of fiction, and Camus also wrote it to be a metaphor for France under occupation in the Second World War. Despite that, anyone who has lived through an epidemic or pandemic can read this book and wonder if Camus was reaching into the future to describe events they lived through, or reaching into their minds to extract their thoughts and feelings.

Camus didn’t have to reach into the future though. He simply had to reach into the past. From the past Camus had plenty of examples to inform him how people might react to a citywide plague. In The Plague Camus describes a city of people hounded by a gnawing sense of separation. For some, this separation is figurative, they are separated from the normalcy and opportunities that the plague and the quarantine deny them. For others, their separation is much more literal, they are trapped in the city while their loved ones outside wait without knowing exactly what’s going on. Camus is chillingly accurate when he tells the story of the desperate measures the city takes to deal with the increasing number of dead. As more and more bodies literally pile up, all the ceremonies and rituals people create to give death meaning are crushed under the weight of logistical demands. First the city buries several people to each grave, then in mass graves, then when that becomes insufficient, they start incinerating the bodies. It all mirrors real life to a disturbing extent. 
There is so much more to The Plague. Like I have with other book discussions in the past, I’d like to share some of my favorite quotes from the book. I have already given away some of the details the reader will find in The Plague, and the quotes below will reveal more. This does not mean, however, that I am giving away everything in Camus’ work. There are plenty of details I am leaving out on purpose, to encourage the reader to experience The Plague for themselves.

Book Quotations

-This first quote from the book is short, but it speaks for itself. 

”How could they have imagined that a plague would cancel the future, their travel and conversations?”

-This second quote is between two characters, one of them a doctor. They are discussing issues relating to plague and faith, and what a doctor’s mission should be in times of plague. 

“Yes,” agreed Tarrou, “I can understand. But your victories will always be temporary, that’s all.” Rieux seemed to darken. “Always, I know it. That’s not a reason to stop fighting.”

-The next excerpt is describing people’s growing indifference to the deaths from the plague. Unlike many other disasters, when a disease ravages a population month after month, they grow exhausted, and are unable to feel the same terror or sorrow that they did in the beginning.

“But nothing is less spectacular than a scourge, and, by their very duration, great misfortunes are monotonous. In the memories of those who lived through them, the terrible days of plague didn’t appear as tall flames, sumptuous and cruel, but rather as an endless stagnation that crushed everything in its path.”

-The text below is near the end of the book. One character just asked Tarrou what he thought would change with the plague winding down in the city.

“Tarrou thought that the plague would both change and not change the city, that, of course, our fellow citizens’ strongest desire was and would be to act as if nothing had changed, and so in that sense, nothing would be changed, but that in another sense, you can’t forget everything, even with necessary force of will, and the plague would leave traces, at least in their hearts.”

Comparison: The Plague & A lot of Questions…

Before concluding I also wanted to compare a section of The Plague with one from my own book. To be clear, I’m not trying to compare myself with Albert Camus, judging by his success he was clearly a better writer than I am. However, I wrote my own book years before I ever heard of The Plague. I was astonished and humbled to find out that Camus had anticipated what I would write in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the late 1940s. No doubt other people before Camus made similar observations. Which, as I said in the introduction, is both comforting and depressing. None of the tragedies that befall us, or any of the uncertainties we have about the future are unprecedented. Calamity is a constant in human history. It’s comforting to know we aren’t alone in our suffering, but it’s discouraging to see the same patterns repeating. I wonder if people living through future pandemics will write something they think is clever and insightful, only to find out Albert Camus was way ahead of them. 

But I’m digressing, I’ll start with a section from The Plague, and then quote my own book. I’ll leave the quotation marks off of my own writing since I can hardly plagiarize myself. Also, the quotation from my book will begin in the middle of a section where I am discussing an imaginary modern pandemic that is killing thousands of people everyday all over the United States.

“But what were a hundred million dead? When you’re at war, you barely have any idea of what a dead man is. And since a dead man carries no weight unless you’ve seen him dead, a hundred million corpses strewn across history are nothing but smoke in the imagination. The doctor remembered the plague of Constantinople, which according to Procopius killed ten thousand victims in a day. Ten thousand dead equaled five times the audience of a large movie theater. That’s what they should do. Gather up the people at the exits of five cinemas, take them to a city square, and make them die in piles to see it a little more clearly. At least then they could put faces they knew to that anonymous pile.”

Can the human brain process the idea of, “I can’t see them, but thousands of people died today from a pandemic, that’s terrible?” Does that idea really sink in for the animal that is concerned about locality, what it can see, and affects that animal specifically? What would it take for that abstract idea to sink in for everyone?

How about this, at an appointed moment every single day, all of those who died as a result of the ongoing pandemic (we will say two thousand five hundred daily) get magically transported out of the hospitals they died in all over the country. Their bodies are then all magically transported to one location, Times Square in New York City…All the bodies in one place allows everyone who looks upon them to physically see, not just imagine, the price of the pandemic that created the bodies they now look upon.

Conclusion

I’ll close out this discussion with one more quote from The Plague. It’s the final paragraph of the book, a warning about how the bubonic plague could one day return to the city of Oran. It doesn’t take much imagination to broaden this warning to the entire planet, and there are more diseases to be worried about than just the plague. All it takes is a simple genetic mutation to start the next pandemic. 

“Indeed, as he heard the cries of delight rising from the city, Rieux remembered that this delight was always threatened. For he knew what this joyous crowd did not, and what you can read in books–that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears, that it can lie dormant for decades in furniture and linens, that it waits patiently in rooms, in basements, in trunks, among handkerchiefs and paperwork, and that perhaps the day would come when, for the sorrow and education of men, the plague would revive its rats and dispatch them to die in a happy city.”

Postscript– I’ll include a link to The Plague below. I also recommend Plagues Upon the Earth, written by Kyle Harper. I’ve reviewed another one of his books in the past, and Plagues Upon the Earth is a fascinating and accessible work. Also, I highly recommend the 2011 film Contagion. It was released 9 years before the Covid-19 pandemic began, and yet it predicted what a 21st century pandemic would look like to an uncanny degree.

The Plague: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-plague-a-new-translation-by-laura-marris-albert-camus/19781908?ean=9780593082096

Plagues Upon the Earth: https://bookshop.org/p/books/plagues-upon-the-earth-disease-and-the-course-of-human-history-kyle-harper/16402399?ean=9780691230597

Contagion: movies unlimited link for contagion

Introduction

As longtime readers might be aware, I tend to think a lot, to ask questions about people and societies they build. Some people might even accuse me of overthinking. Well, I’m certainly not about to prove those people wrong, because I was thinking about the lottery system in the United States. When this piece was published, the lottery industry was massive in the US. Checking any mainstream news feed one was likely to find a story about how big the largest jackpot had grown to after no winning numbers. There were national, state, and local lotteries, with different odds and different payouts. Lottery scratch tickets could be bought in almost any town or city large enough to have a filling station or a grocery store. If you asked anyone buying lottery tickets what they planned to do with their winnings once they finally won chances are they already had their entire life planned out. All they needed to start their new life of happiness and prosperity was to be lucky just one time. 

I object to the entire lottery industry, and the mindset it creates in people who buy into the promises of the lottery. I’ll explain my objections in two broad points in the paragraphs below. Before that, however, I want to make something clear. I’ll be talking below about systemic inequality and people being trapped in inescapable poverty. Global inequality is a massive crisis, and that inequality is due in large part to the machinations and lobbying of those in power to keep it that way. However, I do not believe in some massive conspiracy that world events are being controlled by some reclusive committee of elite. Belief in conspiracy theories appears to me to be an alternative religion for those who do not ascribe to traditional organized religion. Believing in evil masterminds who control world events might sound like a strange thing to put one’s faith in. On the other hand, it’s comforting to think that somebody is in control, no matter how dark their agenda may be. It’s a lot more difficult to accept how meaningless and chaotic reality often is. Systemic inequality doesn’t even require a global conspiracy, basic human greed and self-interest is more than adequate to accomplish the task. 

First Objection

My first major objection to the concept of the lottery, and a lot of gambling in general, is that it thrives and depends on exploiting the desperation and hopes of impoverished people. There would always be people who would gamble and bet their earnings on long odds to add some excitement to their otherwise mundane lives. Gambling is one of those vices humanity seems unable to rid itself of, but the promise of winning instant riches at astronomical odds only appeals to people desperate enough to not hope for much more. Is rent eating half your income or more? Do you have car payments to make, or student loans, or credit card debt, or medical debt? Maybe all of the above? Do you have any savings at all, or has the cost of living reduced your margin to destitution to a razor’s edge? Has living and struggling in late stage surveillance capitalist America left you feeling spent and jaded down to your slowly wilting spirit?

Well worry not, there is a way out! Maybe. All it takes is just a little bit of whatever money you have left over every month or week. If you buy some tickets and pay into a collective pot that lots of other desperate people are buying into, you have a chance of winning that huge pot, minus a massive tax deduction of course. It might not happen this week, or this month, or year, or the decade after that. It might not happen at all, but just imagine the possibilities if it did. You could get that surgery the doctor says you desperately need that you can’t afford, because according to your insurance company, you have a preexisting condition called “being alive.” Maybe you can finally afford to own a home of your own, one that you could afford to maintain and renovate as needed. Maybe you could retire early and take the time to travel to all the places you dreamed of seeing. Isn’t a few dollars here and there worth it for even a remote chance to realize all those hopes?  

Behind all the pomp and hype around winning instant wealth is a predatory instinct to further exploit people who are already being exploited. When someone pins all their hopes on a random accident of chance to liberate them from the injustice of modern American society, they are giving up on finding another solution. To be clear, I don’t fault people for wanting to escape poverty, and for those struggling to live, money is the answer to many of their problems. But there is a diminishing return on the happiness that money can provide, and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be locked into a mode of thinking that believes that money=endless  happiness and fulfillment. The promise of winning the lottery is a carrot dangling on a stick in front of our faces, and just enough people get that carrot for us to believe it could happen to us someday. Maybe we should stop chasing after that carrot and instead demand it. 

Second Objection

The lottery system in the US not only takes advantage of people, it also shines a light on American culture’s selfish individualism. Hoping you win the lottery isn’t a protest against the unjust system that creates inequality to begin with, your only objection is to you being in poverty. If you became rich you would cease to be a victim of the unequal system and instead perpetuate it. The hope of quick riches so many Americans cling to not only allows us to be led around by the nose chasing after chimeras, it leaves us thinking only of ourselves. We shouldn’t limit ourselves to imagining the end to our own poverty, we should imagine the end of poverty, period. Dreaming of winning the lottery shifts people’s thinking and energy away from changing society for the better and instead keeps them locked into it. It reminds me of the lyrics of Pink Floyd’s song Welcome to the Machine; “What did you dream?  It’s alright we told you what to dream.” We are limiting ourselves when we can only imagine a better future for ourselves and for humanity within the confines of the existing status quo.

Some might be thinking at this point: “Really? Are you that much of a killjoy that you have a problem with something that’s fun and relatively innocuous like betting on the lottery? Besides, do you think getting rid of the lottery would make any difference? What do you expect people to do? Is there really any chance of changing systemic inequality when the forces marshaled against that goal are so numerous and powerful?”

Do I think getting rid of predatory practices like the lottery would lead to any great sea change in American society? No. When problems like inequality are rooted as deeply and spread as far in a society as they are in the US, any small change is window dressing, a sop to public opinion. A deeply rooted system can’t be changed without first uprooting the system. I’m mixing metaphors but I hope you get the point. Is it likely to expect systemic inequality to change? If the history of most sedentary societies is instructive, then no. Humanity has a knack for creating hierarchies and institutions of coercive force to legitimize and enforce those hierarchies. On the other hand, how much more unlikely is it to expect deep systemic change if we give up and never try? Or worse yet, what if we literally and figuratively buy into the unequal system in the hope that someday we will be the ones on top benefiting from the inequality we were seeking to escape in the first place? 

Conclusion

Perhaps I am overthinking this issue, and the lottery is something that’s not that controversial, and I should just let people have their fun. Even if that’s true, there is a broader point to be made. We shouldn’t take any part of our society for granted. Human cultures are constantly changing and evolving, nothing remains the way it has always been forever. Just because some cultural practice has been around a long time doesn’t by definition make it good. We shouldn’t take anything for granted. We should always be looking at ourselves and the societies we build, and wondering if what we have built is just, fair, or even makes sense.

Introduction:

One of the points I’ve made many times in my writing, and one I find myself returning to again and again, is the importance of examining historical individuals with a critical eye. Too often people of historical import are reduced to heroes and villains, easily understood and one dimensional caricatures representing what used to be a real person at one point. Obviously, a person could both be a hero, or a villain, depending who you ask. Either way, however, creating a caricature of someone involves removing whatever parts of their life conflicts with the caricature being created. This makes history, and the people in it, a lot simpler, but simple does not mean factual. In fact, if you ask me, the more one simplifies historical actors, the more one distorts them.

For the purpose of this discussion, I want to instead create four broad categories that most people of historical significance could likely belong in. Before anyone points this out, yes I am fully aware of the irony of this. I don’t like people being labeled as heroes or villains, but I will force them into four arbitrary categories that I made up. How is that better? I don’t intend for these categories to be bulletproof, and they are far from a complete list. In addition, I will use some examples below, but which person belongs in what category is also open to argument and interpretation. However, even with those caveats in place, I still think the list below is more robust and retains more nuance than a binary of hero or villain.

Category 1: The Inarguable Bad: These are the sort of people who committed such heinous and inexcusable acts that no one respectable would ever defend them. An example that immediately springs to mind for me is Joseph Mengele, the infamous “Angel of Death.” I hope everyone reading would readily agree that a “doctor” that was an active participant in the genocide carried out at the Auschwitz concentration camp is indefensible. 

Category 2: The Argued Over: The people in this category also are responsible for mass death and suffering, but the issue of whether or not they were “good” or “bad” is debated though not necessarily debatable. Often these are the sort of people who became the authoritarian rulers of states, and the cult of personality they created around themselves can linger and affect public or academic discourse for generations to come. I would put Stalin in this category, specifically because there are still people who make excuses or justifications for the tens of millions of deaths he is responsible for. Time and distance might change who gets put into this category. As the world gets further away from the suffering someone caused, it becomes easier to ignore it or downplay it as an unavoidable consequence of great people changing history.

Category 3: The Inarguable Good: In my opinion almost no one of great historical significance belongs in this category, it is an extremely small club. Crucially I said people of historical significance, I am certain there were plenty of people throughout history who were unusually kind and generous, but never made it into history because humanity’s obsessions revolve around drama and violence. People who belong in this category will also change over time. As cultural norms and values change, people who were once moral paragons might become despicable. 

Category 4: Messy or Uncertain: This classification is vague enough that it can fit most historical figures under its umbrella. These are the sort of people whose qualities and actions both recommend them and damn them. This category also reflects what people are most often like in lived reality, complicated, with a laundry list of overlapping or conflicting motivations and beliefs.

For this piece, I wanted to pick an example of someone I believe belongs in category 4, John Brown (for anyone who is unfamiliar with him I’ll provide a brief biography below). However, depending on who you ask he could belong in any of the other 3 categories. I was inspired to write about John Brown because there are a lot of qualities I admire about him, but almost as many that give me pause. Some of his actions I cannot praise highly enough, and others on basic principle I have to object to. He was a radical for his time, both in his beliefs and his deeds. His radical beliefs were more authentically American than most of his contemporaries, but his radical deeds left many dead in his shadow. In all honesty, John Brown is a man I want to like, but I am unsure if I should. 

A Brief Biography

For those totally unaware of who John Brown was and the time period he lived in I’ll try to provide a succinct biography of the man and the world he lived in. For those of us interested in history we are lucky that John Brown was a grown man when the first cameras were coming into use in the 19th century. Even without knowing anything about him the photograph above reveals a man possessing a unique energy. He had one of the most generic names in the English language, and yet he remains “the” John Brown, not “a” John Brown.

John Brown lived from 1800 to 1859. He was a man of intense religious devotion. Just as important as his religious faith, was his abolitionist views. A fact that many people today misunderstand about the first half of 19th century America is that abolitionists were considered radicals among those of “respectable opinion.” John Brown was a radical among radicals, and he believed in violence to achieve his goals. The two events he is most famous for is a massacre he led in Kansas in 1856, and a raid on a federal armory in what is today West Virginia in 1859.

I’ll try to be brief, but the Pottawatomie Massacre in the Kansas territory stemmed from tension that was present in so many aspects of US politics before the Civil War, the struggle between slave states and free states. The question was always posed when new territories wanted to join the Union: should they allow slavery in their borders when they were incorporated into the Union? There were different attempts at compromises and solutions that conveniently dodged the question of whether slavery should exist at all. The period in Kansas in which John Brown carried out his massacre is known to history as “Bleeding Kansas.” Over a period of years there was basically a miniature civil war in Kansas between people who wanted Kansas to be a free state, and those who wanted it to be a slave state. John Brown and the other perpetrators of the Pottawatomie Massacre targeted pro-slavery supporters in retaliation to an attack against abolitionist newspapers in Lawrence, Kansas shortly before.

After Kansas, Brown eventually made his way to Virginia to lead what turned out to be a foolhardy attempt to secure a federal armory in 1859. Brown intended to use the captured weapons to arm enslaved Black Americans and spread a liberating revolution south. Brown only had a few followers with him, and only a handful of enslaved people actually joined him at the armory. With John Brown and his followers holed up in the armory with some hostages, a standoff and eventual gun fight ultimately lead to the death or capture of Brown’s entire retinue. Brown himself was eventually tried for treason and hanged. The raid was probably never going to work as intended, and at least from some of the books I have read of the Civil War there was speculation that Brown might have been deliberately trying to make a martyr of himself for the cause of abolition.

The raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859 obviously helped increase tensions before the Civil War. While many abolitionists John Brown spoke before the raid cautioned him against it or refused to participate, after the raid and his execution John Brown did become a hero to abolitionists. His heroism to abolitionists was matched by fear and disgust among enslavers. Whatever people’s opinions about the man, John Brown became a household name, not only for the raid itself, but for his stoic and unshakable belief in his cause during his imprisonment before his execution. 

How to Judge John Brown?

There are two important points to remember about the analysis below. 1. This is my own analysis, and in keeping with my theme of the messiness and complexity of history, different people would have different interpretations, and 2. I am basing this discussion off of a brief study of John Brown and his life, if I did a deeper dive into his life story I might come away with different conclusions. I don’t think either of these points detracts from my thesis for this piece. In your own study of history, you will frequently encounter people who do not fit into simple definitions of “good” or “bad.” John Brown’s legacy is both good and bad.

I’ll start with what I consider to be problematic. There’s no getting around that he led a massacre of five people in Kansas. The victims were pro-slavery, but as far as I know, none of them were enslaving anyone at the time of their deaths. Did they deserve to die because of their beliefs, even if those beliefs were abhorrent? Dragging people out of their homes at night and killing them is morally upsetting, no matter how noble the goals and intentions may have been. Anyone who wants to label John Brown a hero has to grapple with this troubling chapter of his life. 

An aspect of John Brown’s character I take issue with is his intense religious devotion. I wrote a whole essay in my book about how people need to take the time to seriously and rigorously question their beliefs, to see if they can withstand scrutiny. As a rule, I am cautious towards people of fanatic religious faith. John Brown might be an exception to that rule, however. If you’re going to be a religious fanatic about any cause, ending slavery is probably the best cause to be devoted to. In spite of the deaths he is responsible for, I would also argue that John Brown was more authentically Christian than so-called “Christians” in the south and border states. In the antebellum south it was common for preachers to use the pulpit to justify the institution of slavery, narrowly interpreting whatever Bible verses or doctrines they needed to to make slavery seem “Christian.” John Brown is certainly not without his blemishes, but a man willing to take up the cause of liberation is a lot closer to the values Christianity is supposed to represent than those who would use their religion to justify owning people. 

As I said above, John Brown was both a radical of beliefs and radical in deeds. While his abolitionist beliefs do not seem so radical today (Brown is partly responsible for that shift in attitude), leading a massacre and raiding an armory are still considered radical deeds in the 21st century. People can certainly quibble over whether Brown’s actions helped or hurt the cause of abolitionism, but I for one cannot disagree with how Brown envisioned slavery ending. John Brown did not want a gradual end to slavery, where states slowly outlawed it and children of the enslaved were freed when they reached a certain age. John Brown wanted slavery to end immediately, full stop, and he was willing to help arm the enslaved so they could secure their own liberation. There was another proposal on how to end the institution of slavery, President Lincoln suggested it many times, and it was actually used to end slavery in the British Empire, compensation to “owners.” The idea is a simple one: enslavers would free their captives and in exchange, the government would compensate them for their “lost property.” The more I consider this solution, the more I am disgusted, and I want to take an interlude to explain why.

Interlude

If there is such a thing as evil, and slavery is an evil institution, in fundamental opposition to inalienable rights that everyone possesses, how does one put a stop to this evil? I know, how about we pay enslavers a ton of money, and let the people they enslaved fend for themselves with little or no aid. Does that sound like an even remotely just way of ending an evil institution? I sure as hell don’t think so. 

Let me address some potential critiques before continuing. Historians of the US Civil War and the period leading up to it can correctly point out that I am simplifying a lot of very complex history. As I said earlier, abolitionists were often considered radicals, in the 19th century there was a whole spectrum of opinion in the US on slavery. On one extreme of the spectrum some justified slavery as a positive good, some didn’t like slavery but didn’t see a way to end it, some wanted slavery to end but were extremely cautious in how it should end, some wanted to end slavery quickly while still avoiding war, and at the other extreme you had people like John Brown who said damn all caution, end slavery immediately, even if force is required. As with any issue that affects an entire society, and that an entire society is complicit in, there were a million different ideas of how to end slavery, why it should end, and what needed to happen when or if slavery did end. I am having to simplify a lot of history to condense it down into this short essay, but I hope my arguments will still have merit despite that.

The second critique that I anticipate is anyone who has or currently holds a position of power and is somehow reading this will accuse me of being naive and unrealistic. They might say that I don’t understand how the levers of power are deployed, and that I don’t appreciate the difficult compromises that have to be made to do the most good while avoiding as much suffering as possible. This hypothetical person might ask me to imagine an alternate reality where the US was able to avoid the Civil War by paying “owners” to release their captives. They might ask me: “Would paying for the enslaved to be freed be worse than all the death and suffering that was caused by the Civil War?” I don’t think any of us are equipped to answer the question, but it is worth considering. However, I don’t believe I am being naive when I say that the idea of compensating “owners” is catastrophically flawed. 

In cases such as the end of slavery, monetary compensation has practical as well as symbolic value. What is being said when an “owner” is paid for their “lost property.” It is being stated clearly that their “property” was indeed property, that the “owners” had a right to own people, and being paid for the “loss” benefits them both financially and symbolically. Ending slavery by paying enslavers is a blatant justification for slavery. Enslavers deserved nothing because they had no right to own anyone in the first place. If enslavers became financially destitute because of the loss of “their” enslaved captives, that’s a good thing. No prosperity should be built on the back of human suffering (that applies just as well to the present as the past). One might point out that ending slavery abruptly would have destabilized the entire US economy, not just in the South. That’s true, but at what point do we become complicit in criminal institutions when we care more about the economy than we do about injustice? How many times have more cautious (read, liberal) people made an excuse such as this: “Yes (fill in the blank) is obviously terrible, but we can’t just stop doing it all at once, that would be too disruptive.” As a result of this overcautious attitude, injustice is allowed to continue unabated. 

If anyone deserved financial compensation, and land as well, it was the people being freed from enslavement. They’re the ones who suffered at the hands of their captors, and getting money and land would have gone some way to apologize for their captivity. Additionally, paying “owners” would only entrench wealth and class disparities further. What good is it to end slavery if you force the people freed into circumstances so difficult and so unequal as to be functionally similar to enslavement? 

Conclusion

John Brown did not want enslavers paid to end their criminal enterprises. John Brown was willing to fight and die for the cause of freedom. Unlike the founding fathers, who betrayed the basic principle of liberty and enshrined slavery in the constitution to preserve the union, Brown recognized this blatant contradiction and was appalled by it. I want to admire John Brown, being driven to anger about hypocrisy and injustice is a character trait more Americans should have.

On the other hand, admiration and respect should not be blind, as I have said many times before. We can like people in the past while also realizing we might not know much about them, or that they held attitudes and beliefs that would be scandalous in the modern world. Life is messy and uncertain, that is just as true in the past as it is today. What is equally true is that people have always contained multitudes. People’s lives and values can be contradictory and hypocritical. This doesn’t mean we can’t admire people in the past, it just means we need to examine those we admire with a more critical eye. 

Postscript: As I was writing this piece I was also reading Malcolm X’s autobiography. In it I read a quote that related to American Christianity that I have to relay here. Above I said that despite John Brown’s violence, I ultimately think that he was a better christian than the enslavers who used their religion to justify slavery. In his autobiography, Malcolm X describes how christian values of nonviolence were twisted to encourage the enslaved to be more docile.

In the quote below, the word “Negro” is capitalized and in quotes in the original text. The word negro in this quotation is being used to refer mixed race people that are being brainwashed to embrace the values of white society and demonize their African heritage. 

“This religion taught the “Negro” that black was a curse. It taught him to hate everything black, including himself. It taught him that everything white was good, to be admired, respected, and loved. It brainwashed this “Negro” to think that he was superior if his complexion showed more white pollution of the slave-master. This white man’s Christian religion further deceived and brainwashed this “Negro” to always turn the other cheek, and grin, and scrape, and bow, and be humble, and to sing, and to pray, and to take whatever was dished out by the devilish white man; and to look for his pie in the sky, and for his heaven in the hereafter, while right here on earth the slave-master white man enjoyed his heaven.”

PSS: If you want to find similar critiques of American Christianity that mirror those from Malcolm X’s autobiography I recommend scrolling down this blog feed to the August 2023 discussion of the book From the Deep Woods to Civilization.

Introduction:

For this blog post I wanted to digress away from my usual book discussions or random musings and try my hand at some satire. I wanted to talk about the humanitarian disaster faced by migrants and refugees trying to enter the US at the southern border. I thought about writing a serious post more like I normally do on this blog, trying to point out the gross injustice of how refugees are treated by the US and how they are portrayed in the media, and the flagrant hypocrisy of the US’s image versus its actual conduct. However, beyond the injustice and hypocrisy there is another element to the plight of refugees at the southern border that only satire can really convey, a profound absurdity. Politicians and media outlets looking to create and exploit fear portray refugees at the southern border as if they were zombies, looking to beat down the door of civilization in a mindless obsession. The real variety and complexity of the people trying to get into the US from the southern border is so removed from the fear-mongering portrayal that adjectives fail to capture the preposterousness. 

By the way, this piece is being written during the Biden administration, but I am pointedly using the words US policy. When Trump was president it was fashionable among some major media outlets to be critical of his border policy. Make no mistake, as with practically everything during Trump’s presidency, his administration’s policy toward the southern border was disastrously inhumane and short-sighted. However, this does not make Trump unique, treating migrants and asylum seekers with callous hostility is a bipartisan sport in US politics.

Satire is the best vehicle to capture how silly, tragic, and cruel US policy at the southern border truly is. Though I should point out the US is not unique in how it treats refugees either. My reading of history is that states always see masses of refugees as a “problem” to be dealt with rather than as desperate people in need of understanding and aid. Politics is an ugly business, and it grows uglier the higher up the ladder you go. People in the highest echelons of authority typically only aid refugees if they have no alternative, or if there is an ulterior benefit to doing so. If they can get away with it most governments are all too happy to kick refugees while they’re down. For the powerful it’s easy to mistreat people who have no way of fighting back or recourse to seek justice. The only way the US is unique is because it portrays itself as a place for people to be welcome and start a new life in peace and prosperity, which makes mistreatment of migrants especially egregious.

While the goal with the story you’re about to read is to be satirical, I’m barely exaggerating real events and real views that are current when this piece is published. If the future after this publication is especially bleak I might be understating the obscene horror of US border policy. That’s the danger of dehumanization and hate (as if it’s not already obvious), it can drive people to commit unthinkable atrocities based on ludicrous ideas that collapse under the lightest scrutiny.

Finally, before beginning I am indebted to the discussion and ideas on many episodes of the podcast It Could Happen Here in helping shape this piece. I recommend It Could Happen Here to readers and I’ll post links to the show below. Also, just in case I haven’t said this enough already, everything you are about to read below is satire, please do not mistake any of it for my actual views.

Talking Out of Both Sides of Our Mouths:

We are over the shoulder of a “reporter” (his demographic biography will become obvious), as he prepares the final draft of a short piece before he submits it to his editor. The report being submitted is entitled The Defense of Our Sublime “Republic” Against the Foreign Hordes. The report reads as follows:

We all know well that everyday we are being kept safe from the evils beyond our borders by proud and diligent men as they surveille and reconnoiter the border for fiendish intruders. To better understand how the land of freedom is being kept safe, I decided to visit one of the detention centers in the desert near the border. I wanted to see first hand what our brave border agents were up against, and how they were fighting back against the invasions from the south. 

I decided to travel to a prison camp under federal jurisdiction, but being administered by a private company. The company polices the prison, and the government reimburses them for their services. “What could be more American,” I thought to myself, “than imprisoning people and making money doing it?” It was nothing short of brilliant. As a bonus, the legal line over who had ultimate responsibility for the prison was murky, which made it difficult for those pesky lawyers and activists to interfere with the divine mission of the camp guards.

As soon as I arrived at the prison, after a long and dusty drive from the nearest highway, I was both amazed and thankful. The dry heat and blazing sun was oppressive, and throughout the tour I thanked the guards for their dedication for working in such appalling conditions. As one would expect with any prison, the perimeter was ringed with walls, watchtowers, and razor wire to keep the invaders secured. There were open air sections of the prison in the central yard, as well as indoor cell blocks where inmates were housed and processed.

 “What we need is to stem the tide of foreigners wanting to cross,” said the warden. “To do that we need deterrents. That’s why we keep conditions for the prisoners so bad, it accomplishes two goals. One, it’s a warning: Don’t come here! As for the second goal, well, it’s a helluva lot cheaper this way.” This prison I was touring is one piece of a deterrent system along the border, the warden explained. “Does this deterrent system work?” I asked, “It seems like there are a lot of prisoners here.” “Of course the deterrents work,” the warden replied. “We are busy, sure, almost overrun at times, but imagine how much worse it would be if we weren’t here at all!” I couldn’t fault the warden for his flawless logic, so I asked him to show me around and explain the level of threat that these prisoners posed to us. 

As we surveyed the prison from a watchtower the warden explained: “These people are dastardly, diabolical even. They are always trying to smuggle black tar heroin trans abortions across the border, but they’re so good at hiding their stashes before we catch them that we have literally never found any, and they’re so good at disguising themselves as helpless refugees that some people actually feel sympathy for them. Can you believe that?” the warden asked incredulously. “What exactly are black tar heroin trans abortions?” I asked. He replied, “I’ll tell you what they are, bad.” That was good enough for me so I moved on to my other questions. “How are prisoners sorted once they are caught and processed?” He replied,“These people travel in “family” units, to try and fool us into thinking they are coming here for legal work. To let them know we won’t be fooled by those tactics, we separate these so-called “families” to make it more difficult for them to scheme and plot while in prison.” I could scarcely believe the depths these foreigners would go to in order to try and sully our utopia, and I was overawed at the perceptiveness of our border agents for spotting their deceptions. 

After this discussion with the warden, I decided I had to try and speak to one of these prisoners, so that I could truly stare into the face of evil. As the warden and I passed our reflections in the windows of the guard barracks on our way to the cell block, the warden advised me on safety precautions. I would have to be accompanied by two guards, and I would have to stand well away from the prisoner to make sure that they didn’t lunge at me from inside their cell. I was led to one of the isolation cells, where the most dangerous or unpredictable prisoners were kept away from the others. Initially I beheld the figure in the cell with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, but both these emotions quickly morphed into disgust. His name was apparently Pedro (age 3), and he was weeping openly and loudly. The guards told me his tears were either from the shame of being caught, or a pathetic attempt to win sympathy. He also kept loudly repeating the same sentence over and over again “¡Quiero mi mami! ¡Quiero mi mami!” I asked the guards what this meant, and they said Pedro must be confessing to his crimes of terrorism.

Pedro must have been simple minded, because he would say nothing else, the more I tried to question him, the louder he confessed. I decided further questioning would be pointless, and while the interview was not informative, it was instructive. After a close encounter with one of these foreigners, I am better able to appreciate why prisons like this one were so valuable and necessary.  Leaving the isolation cells and moving once again out into the yard, I was shown another example of American entrepreneurial spirit. Naturally, all these foreigners would be ejected back to the savage lands from whence they came, but someone had a brilliant idea. Shipping all these intruders back out of the country would cost money, what if the intruders could be made to pay for their own return journeys? How could this be accomplished you ask? Well, the company that runs the prisons has also contracted with factories all over the country. These factories bring in raw materials and parts, and the prisoners, under close supervision to avoid sabotage, are made to assemble the parts into finished products. Once a group has assembled enough goods equal to the cost of deporting them, then they are, you guessed it, deported immediately! Americans get cheaper products on the shelves while they are being kept safe from invaders, it’s a win-win strategy for everyone. 

As my tour of the prison was coming to an end, I decided in the future I would have to visit every part of our nation’s border deterrent system, to fully understand and appreciate how each part of the system works in concert to strengthen one another. Today, however, I took one last look at the main gate as I was leaving, to remember and appreciate what I had seen today. Upon further inspection, I noticed a plaque I had missed on my arrival. Inscribed on the plaque were two quotes, which explained the guiding mission and principles of the prison and the great nation it represented. The first was from a poem that all Americans know and love, an excerpt from the poem on the Statue of Liberty “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” The second inscription read “Work sets you free.” I didn’t recognize the second inscription, so I decided to focus on the first one. 

How brilliant that we live in a nation of freedom that welcomes those who wish to make a new life here. That freedom is not without cost, however. Our zeal must be tempered by security and vigilance. The welcoming arms of liberty must be safeguarded from those seeking the welcoming arms of liberty. 

Links for It Could Happen Here Podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/it-could-happen-here/id1449762156

https://www.audible.com/pd/It-Could-Happen-Here-Podcast/B08K57PSTC

Introduction:

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America is an absolutely fascinating book that provides a desperately needed new perspective on American history. The book traces the parallel development of racist and antiracist ideas in America from the 17th century all the way to the early 21st century. 

Like previous posts for this blog, rather than a direct review, I wanted to discuss some topics of Stamped from the Beginning for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that the book and the author have already received an enviable amount of laurels and accolades, anything I could say in a review would just be gratuitous at this point. The second reason is that I wanted to relate some of what I read in Stamped from the Beginning to what I wrote in my own book. 

Before beginning the discussion it is important to explain the basic thesis of Stamped from the Beginning, at least as I understand it. In a nutshell, Kendi uses three categorizations to separate views on race: “Segregationist ideas have blamed Black people themselves for racial disparities. Antiracist ideas have pointed to racist policy. Assimilationist ideas have conveyed both: Black people and racist policy were to blame for racial disparities.” Kendi uses these terms throughout the book to help make meaningful distinctions, especially between what is antiracist and what is assimilationist thinking. Kendi also makes clear that racist ideas and practices have not remained static, they are ever changing, always deploying new bogus ideas and adapting their tactics to fit with the changing status quo. “For nearly six centuries, antiracist ideas have been pitted against two kinds of racist ideas: segregationist and assimilationist.” Another crucial point Kendi makes is that most Americans, myself included, bought into a false narrative on the production and consumption of racist ideas. I’ll quote the book again below:

“I was taught the popular folktale of racism: that ignorant and hateful people had produced racist ideas, and that these racist people had instituted racist policies. But when I learned the motives behind the production of many of America’s most influentially racist ideas, it became quite obvious that this folktale, though sensible, was not based on a firm footing of historical evidence…It has actually been the inverse relationship—racist policies led to racist ideas which led to ignorance and hate.”

Stamped from the Beginning also follows the lives and works of five historical figures to track the changes in racist and antiracist ideas over time. This is one of my favorite aspects of the book, and it highlights a subject that I refuse to stop talking about, the importance of complexity and nuance, especially when it comes to important historical figures. Worshiping some people as heroes and denigrating others as villains is simple and creates a narrative structure of history that people desperately desire, but it is wishful thinking. People are imperfect, and putting them on a pedestal will not make their imperfections go away. As Kendi demonstrates many times throughout Stamped from the Beginning, people can work all their lives against segregationist ideas while believing and propagating assimilationist ideas, which are still racist. Or someone can promote some antiracist ideas while holding on to elitist, or sexist, or homophobic beliefs, or any other combination you can think of, because people are endlessly complicated.

Discussion:

“What caused think tankers after the presidential election of Barak Obama in 2008 to produce the racist idea of a postracial society, when they knew all those studies had documented racial disparities?” That idea, one of a postracial society, is one that I wanted to discuss further. As Kendi makes clear, it’s a racist idea, one that tries to ignore the problem of racial disparities by pretending that we have moved beyond them. However, I think the concept of a postracial society is pernicious beyond the fact that it’s a racist concept. I think it’s a dangerously naive way of thinking. 

This is just inference on my part, but with every big milestone for antiracism in American history, there is always a feeling among some people that this is the end of racism, or that racism is on its way out. However, as Stamped from the Beginning catalogs time and time again, racist self interest doesn’t go away, it changes tactics. Here is a quick example of these shifting tactics in US history: how do you enslave someone when slavery has been outlawed by a constitutional amendment? What if there is a loophole and you can enslave people who are imprisoned? Well, the solution is simple really, you pass a bunch of laws that sound neutral in their racial language, but in practice are used to arrest and enslave people of color. In addition, I think people who talk of a postracial society miss a simple yet important observation. There can be progress in one area of society and a lack of progress somewhere else. A good example of this would be the desegregation of the military in the Truman administration, an important step, but desegregating the military didn’t make racist policies disappear from American life. 

For the sake of argument, let’s pretend for a moment that someday in America’s future, a postracial society is actually achieved. I still think America celebrating its own excellence for eliminating racism would be foolish, like an ancient Greek tragedy when fate punishes someone for their hubris. Behind the idea of a postracial America, it’s implied that this uncomfortable chapter of our shared history is closed forever, never to be reopened. It sounds great in theory, but it isn’t true. History is not a story book, it doesn’t have a clean narrative structure that sees everything turning out alright in the end. No uncomfortable chapter of humanity’s history is ever closed. The particulars will change, but humanity will always be capable of visiting violence and hate on one another. The way to avoid revisiting the uglier moments of our history is not with premature celebration, but with constant vigilance.

If you want to see an example of the premature celebration and the hubris I described above, then look no further than the resurgence of fascism in Western democracies in the early 21st century. Ever since the end of the Second World War, the US patted itself on the back for playing an instrumental role in the destruction of Nazi Germany. America seeing itself as the unblemished moral heroes in the Second World War is one of the reasons why WWII history remained a popular subject for so long. All the while far too many Americans forgot the lesson of Nazi Germany, unstable democracies are the perfect soil for fascism to take root in. Fascists can not only take advantage of existing instability, they can help foment that instability, and without a hint of shame gain adherents by promising to end the instability that they themselves are responsible for. It’s maddeningly two-faced, but that’s another mistake that Americans made, they expected fascists to respect democratic norms, when the whole point of fascism is to destroy democratic norms. Instead of resting on their laurels and celebrating the destruction of fascism during WWII, Americans should have been on guard to ensure that their democracy wouldn’t fall to fascism. 

The way I see it, the vigilance needed against fascism is similar to the vigilance needed against racism. I don’t think it’s wrong to celebrate progress against racism, and I don’t think it’s wrong to be proud of progress. Celebration and pride, however, should never, ever, lead to complacency. The fight for human rights is a difficult and seemingly never-ending struggle, but it’s a just struggle, one well worth fighting.

Conclusion:

Stamped from the Beginning is the kind of book I wish I had read before I wrote my book. I’d like to think that I was mostly on the right track already when it came to antiracist ideas, but Kendi’s book is one that can change your perspective on American history, and force the reader to reexamine all the myths and lies Americans tell about their past. Even better, Kendi’s strategy on how to end racism I think is both novel and realistically practical. You can’t convince someone to stop being racist by appealing to their morality and you can’t educate racism away. The best way to help curb racist thought is by appealing to self-interest. Everyone in America would be better off if we lived in a society without racism, so everyone would benefit. It’s in every American’s self-interest to fight against racist policies.

 
 I know I said I wouldn’t review Stamped From the Beginning, but I do have a concise review that I’m sure any author could appreciate. Stamped from the Beginning is a damn good book. Buy and read it. 

As always, if you’re interested in buying the book I’ll post a couple of links below:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stamped-from-the-beginning-ibram-x-kendi/1122344517?ean=9781568585987

https://bookshop.org/p/books/stamped-from-the-beginning-the-definitive-history-of-racist-ideas-in-america-ibram-x-kendi/18733686?ean=9781645030393