“Timid or stupid people often enjoy times of crisis.
They can suspend, for the country or the cause, those careful discriminations,
which tire the brain and do no good to the career. ‘Now,’ they cry, ‘is not
time for academic straw-splitting and parlour theorizing. Close the ranks! He
that is not with me is against me!’ And so there is always a drift towards
crisis, a gentle, persistent pressure towards some simple alignment of Good and
Evil, Friend and Enemy. Even the churches are drifting slothfully towards a
crude Manichaeism of Darkness and Light and away from Christ, who said so
inscrutably that we should love our enemies.”—Anglo-Irish historian,
translator, and essayist Hubert Butler (1900-1991), “Crossing the Border,”
in Independent Spirit: Essays (1996)
When Butler wrote these lines in 1955, he was
talking about the border between the Republic of Ireland and Ulster. (Little
did he know that the issue would become considerably more fraught and violent
within a generation—or that, by 2020, unrest might raise its head again in this
area.)
But he could just as easily have been talking about
the post-9/11 atmosphere, or even now in the United States. People who should
know better are falling in the social media for fake memes that appeal to their
prejudices. It is precisely because an
item strikes a chord with you that it should be investigated.
In bewailing “timid” people, Butler was not
criticizing people who took reasonably precautions about their physical safety,
but those who fell victim to a herd mentality, who followed a party line
without thinking.
You would think that a public health crisis would be
the one time that partisanship would be put aside. Instead, it has only
exacerbated everything that has made these last two decades such rancid ones.
Avoid labels and embrace “careful distinctions.”
Those actions have never been more necessary to the survival of this republic, or
even the world.
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