What does pure evil look like?

   

    It looks a lot like Stephen Miller, Trump's closest adviser and lackey.  I have spent most of my seventy-five years looking at people and our society with regard to ethical matters.  This is to say that I have made ethics a focus and even majored in the philosophy of ethics as an undergraduate at Penn State.  In the course of doing that, and one of the principle reasons I did so, I encountered a remarkable soul.  His name was Dr. Ernst Hans Freund, and when I knew Dr. Freund he was a professor emeritus of philosophy (emphasis on ethics) about to retire.  He was in a place in his life that made him willing to depart from the abstruse and lofty realm of formal philosophy, and deal with an undergrad veteran who was just looking for some real-world answers that would make living more meaningful and doable, i.e. me.  

  Dr. Freund was willing to read my ramblings and suggest places to look for further insights.  My quest was to discover and to gain a functional understanding of what is required to be an 'ethical' person.  I wanted to understand how 'selfishness' and 'selflessness' interact with each other.  And, I needed to know when a person is being simply 'self-interested', and what is to be accomplished by striving to practice 'selflessness'.  Each week I would write an essay and then sit in Dr. Freund's office and listen to his thoughts on my thoughts.  Of course, his views were informed by a life-time of philosophical endeavor.  He had been a student of philosophy in university when the Nazis came to power and it soon became apparent that Germany was now a dangerous place for not only Jews ,but for Quakers, Social Democrats, Communists, gays, and anybody who didn't sign-on with the new order of Hitler and his henchmen.  Dr. Freund was a Quaker--that is the source of his family name in fact, which means "Friend", a term for Quakers.  And, he immigrated to America in time to avoid being swept up in the Nazi web of death and terror.

   In our peregrinations....love that word, eh.....Dr. Freund led me to explore views that eventually all began to form a kind of philosophical constellation that would serve me the rest of my life....although I didn't understand that at the time.  A few years later I would become an initiate in a Sufi Order and set foot on the path that I have followed ever since.  A pivotal principle of Sufism is the knowledge that love, harmony and beauty are the core of all we do and all we seek.  This triumvirate is even referred to as, "The Only Being" in the Sufi invocation that is used as a kind of over-arching umbrella for understanding life.

  In my time with this remarkable man, I also learned what constitutes a working definition of 'evil'.  Without getting too complicated and wound-up in the world of concepts, let me say that 'evil' is largely and more easily understood as a gauge of the impact a person's actions have.  If you intend to harm others, by any of almost infinite means, you are setting foot on the path of evil.  It can also be fairly and simply defined by stating its antithesis.  Evil is the embrace of hatred over love, of violence over peacefulness, of selfishness that deprives others, and....do you really need me to continue?  Evil is one of those qualities in life that fits very neatly into the, "...you know it when you see it", category.  It has a particular feeling to it, and it even has its own stench.  By this I mean that evil has its own 'atmosphere', and one becomes immediately aware on encountering it in a given situation.  There are, of course, more subtle variations on the theme of evil, but, for the most part, it has such a distinct presence that a sudden encounter with it can even make a person feel panicky or even nauseated, or just un-grounded and very uncomfortable.  The subtle variety eventually makes its presence known via a very distinct feeling that 'something is wrong here'.  

A glimpse into his black heart might turn you to stone
Nah, just kidding.  But, it should set off your 'creep alarm'

    So, my purpose this morning...and, thank you for being patient and sticking with me here....is to ask each of us to rekindle our awareness of evil.  I am hopeful that just doing this will enhance our ability to resist it, to counter it, to 'out it'.  Doing this has the ability to largely disarm it, to render it less able to permeate all it touches with its distinctly malodorous aroma.

  Ever since he popped-up on the political stage, as a Trump sycophant and apparently one of the Idiot's top advisers....Stephen Miller has caught and held my attention.  For whatever reasons, dating back to his upbringing and his journey through the educational system, Stephen Miller has acquired an attitude that has alarming aspects.  He is determined to cause as much pain for refugees and immigrants as he possibly can. It isn't completely clear if this was his very own idea, or if he got it from elsewhere, but, Miller is the one who pushed the Idiot to adopt it....thereby inflicting such pain and distress that it would serve as a deterrent to others who might contemplate coming to America. 

  I am not interested in citing here a laundry list of the ways in which this man has inflicted his ideas on others.  He's had the president's ear from the outset and it seems clear that the Idiot likes what Miller offers him for advice. Otherwise, he'd be gone, gone, gone....just like the sizeable crowd of other advisers and operatives who ran afoul of the Idiot's wishes.  I am more interested in the energy that Miller brings to the table.  I also find it somewhat curious that he bears such a stark resemblance to Dr. Josef Goebbles, the Nazi propaganda minister.  Ironically, Miller was born Jewish, but if appearances are at all significant, Miller is kindred spirit.  

  I wrote sometime back that the Nazi uber-monster, Reinhard Heydrich, was a perfect illustration of evil manifest in a human being.  There is a film clip of Heydrich coming out of some meeting, and, as he moves toward the camera and then slides on by, he fixes the lens with his gaze and it's one of the few film clips I have ever seen that runs chills down my spine.  His is the gaze of pure evil manifest.  If Mephisto has walked the planet in pseudo-human form, this surely is a glimpse of him.  

  Aside: At a national knife show where I was displaying my work, a client pulled something out of his 'man purse' and proffered it to me.  I removed it from a satin bag and found myself looking at a gold-plated letter opener, with sheath.  The sheath was emblazoned with black enamel runes of the SS, and the knife itself had a human skull on the pommel with rubies in the eye sockets.  It was creepy enough...and then I turned it over and saw the engraved inscription.  It was a gift from Reinhard Heydrich to Heinrich Himmler on Himmler's birthday.  I almost dropped it on the table.  The energy contained in this little 'memorabilia' was palpable and it was enough to take my breath away.  Here, right in front of me, was a personal item gifted to one of the most evil men who has ever lived, by another who could easily vie for that title.

  This is the exact same energy that emanates from Stephen Miller.  Every time that he is interviewed on the t-v, it re-impresses me how malevolent and just plain creepy he is.  He states things in a way that would be offensive even  if he was sharing a recipe for muffins.  He is clearly hostile toward his interviewers, and one gets the feeling that he would order them incarcerated if he was in a position to do so.  This is right in line with the idea that the Idiot could just tell the Supreme Court to over-turn the election and they would bow to his will because he put three of them there.  They voted unanimously to reject this idea that millions of votes should be tossed out just because the Idiot said so....and offered no credible evidence of any fraud.  The 'fraud' was the Idiot himself finally showing the entire planet that he could care less about democracy and that he craves being a dictator.  After all, dictating is what dictators do and how cool is it that people obey them....either out of fear, as in Putin's Russia..or out of delusion, like millions of his followers who have imbibed the Kool-Aid and believe every lie that comes out of his wee, funnel-shaped yap.

  This is a time for all people of conscience to really pay close attention to what is happening to our country.  This election has offered some hope that we can make it through to the other side....of the pandemic, of having a mentally-ill wannabe dictator in the highest office. But, unless we exercise our right to participate--via voting, and acting out loudly whenever possible--we will see the slime-wads of the senate...yes, I am referring to you, Moscow Mitch....destroy much of what has taken three generations and a dozen presidents to build.  Working people, and all minorities across the nation will find that they are being repeatedly marginalized and excluded from having any say at all in how the country responds to the dire challenges in front of us,  The pandemic is really just a distraction from the Climate Crisis, income inequality, food insecurity, education for the rich and indebtedness for the rest of us.  None of this will work out well for the 'little people', as long as the greedy sycophants like McConnell, Cruz, Graham et all have their way in congress.

  Step one, I most fervently hope, will be winning both congressional races in Georgia.  Failing to do so will set the stage for another four years of McConnell doing everything in his considerable gate-keeper's power to screw the working people of America.  Don't believe me, just take a good hard look at what he's done at every turn in the road.