Tyranny of the violent

I finally rented Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" last night. It's the story of a Polish concert pianist's struggle for survival in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation in the 40's. I've passed up this movie up time after time, thinking, "Yet another Holocaust movie that swept up all the Oscars - how typical." I've seen Schindler's List. I'm not a Jew, why should I still care, right? But I was riveted by the film and it scared the hell out of me.

Why? I realized for the first time just how easily the tyranny of the strong can lead to the slaughter of an entire class of people. And despite what we think we've learned about The Holocaust and genocide over the past sixty years, there's no shortage of recent examples: it happened in Cambodia in the seventies (the Pol Pot's elimination of "traitors"), Turkey (Turks vs Armenians), it happened in Bosnia (the Serbs vs the Croats & the Serbs vs the Muslims); it happened in Rwanda & Burundi (the Hutus vs the Tutsis), and it's happening in The Sudan (Arabs vs Africans). And some of Israel's behavior in the West Bank and Gaza is an example of just how easy it is for the oppressed to become the oppressor. Maintaining peace among humans requires a perilous balance of sociology, a veritable razor's edge of tolerance.

The danger is thinking that oppression or even genocide can't happen here in the good 'ole U.S.A. When I hear the venom with which "liberals" are described by certain "conservatives", it sends a shiver down my spine. The term "liberal" is becoming synonymous with "weak, undisciplined and immoral" - so much so that liberals have taken shelter behind the term "progressive" to avoid being branded as less-than-American.

Beware of shifting language in a shifting culture. "Zero Tolerance" can very easily lapse into "Intolerance". A "Patriot Act" can very easily become a legal excuse to interrogate suspected traitors to The Republic and whisk them away to locales unknown without charging them with an actual crime. The Constitution can suddenly becomes a "living document" that is conveniently maleable to fit the needs of the times - with all that talk of forefathers and their superior judgement going right out the window.

Referring again to the "progressive" talk-radio show that I mentioned in the post below, a particularly venomous caller used a playground analogy to describe, as he put it, "...the difference between Republicans and liberals" (sic). He said, in essence, when a playground bully confronts a Republican, the Republican punches him in the nose. When a playground bully confronts a liberal, the liberal runs back to class to go tell the teacher. The insinuation here is that the liberal will not stand up for himself, the liberal is a coward, the liberal is a tattle-tale (with the U.N. playing the part of the teacher, I would guess). The Republican, on the other hand, is a courageous hero who took "pre-emptive action" to dispatch with the bully for everyone's benefit. What the analogy doesn't address is the political affinity of the bully.

The show's guest chided the caller for his propensity toward violence and dismissed the argument. But I couldn't help but think of a photograph I saw in a local newspaper several years ago. It showed a black woman coming to the aid of a KKK sympathizer who was having the shit kicked out of him by a group of so-called liberals who showed up to protest the racist's parade. I wonder, was the black woman a liberal or a conservative?