[Mb-civic] Dance of the demons - James Carroll - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Dance of the demons

By James Carroll  |  October 31, 2005

TONIGHT THE children will be out, pretending to be demons. The whimsical 
traditions of trick or treat, masked mischief, and ritualized mayhem are 
a way of dealing with a dark mystery.

The delightful fright of the haunted house and its spooks initiates 
youngsters into the macabre realm of mortality. Costumes teach that 
deception is part of life. The threat at the door implicates even the 
innocent, who happily enact the abandonment of morality. The figure of 
the witch is emblematic because this holiday makes a joke of 
scapegoating murder. Play is never more serious than on Halloween 
because what the mockery confronts is nothing less than evil.

What is evil anyway? The myths of the devil, a snare-layer existing 
apart from humans, are well established, from Lucifer to Satan to 
Cruella. Their legends promote the notion that we descendants of Eve are 
at the mercy of a wicked enemy whose attacks are from outside. When we 
personalize that enemy and identify it, we can launch a counter-attack. 
The battle is what our children enact tonight. Smashing pumpkins is a 
version of witch-burning; if we like such violence it is because it 
leaves us feeling purified. Nothing sanctifies the self like 
condemnation of the other.

But there is another way to think of evil, finding it in the juncture 
between individual freedom and social context. The story of Genesis 
posits the malevolent serpent, but what ruined Paradise was not the 
serpent but the option made in its favor by Adam and Eve. What follows 
such choice is always unforeseen, but its dynamic is inevitable: Choice 
leads to consequence, which leads to new and graver choice, which leads 
in turn to yet graver consequence, and so on. A train of action-reaction 
is set in motion that quickly outpaces the ability of any one person to 
slow it.

This phenomenon can take the form of the ''grooved thinking" of a 
bureaucracy or of the ''institutional culture" that trumps even the good 
intentions of those who operate within it. Every human choice is made 
inside a rushing current of prior choices, and the pressure is not good.

Saint Paul spoke of the ''wiles of the devil," but his defining metaphor 
for evil was systemic, not personal. ''For we are not contending against 
flesh and blood," he wrote, ''but against the principalities, against 
the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness." For 
Paul, the enemy was not fallen angels, but ''sovereignties" which are 
hostile to humanity. He was talking about Roman tyrants and an uncaring 
imperial bureaucracy. He was talking about politics.

The clearest instance of this phenomenon today is unfolding in Iraq. 
''Wars generate their own momentum," Robert McNamara once wrote, ''and 
follow the law of unintended consequences." George W. Bush must be held 
accountable for the consequences of his fateful decisions, from the 
2,000 dead Americans to the American embrace of torture to the igniting 
of a clash of civilizations. But the ease with which the United States 
embarked on Bush's unnecessary and illegal war -- with huge popular, 
political, and pundit support -- was evidence of an already established 
momentum that predated Bush, and even his father.

Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton 
all kept the malevolent current flowing, if despite themselves. Bush 
simply stepped into it. An unprecedented American momentum toward war 
was unleashed in the 20th century, its destructive energy fueled by the 
heat of an unchecked nuclear arsenal. That momentum defines the nation 
now, and, for the first time in history, threatens the very earth. The 
principalities and powers are us. In the name of the fight against evil, 
good people established the ''sovereignty" of a militarized culture, 
laying bare the darkest mystery of all: What we construct to oppose evil 
involves us in it. Having armed evil with the nuclear bomb, we have made 
evil more sovereign than ever.

If only there were a devil to exorcise or a witch to burn. If only there 
were an axis of evil to oppose. Well, there is Saddam -- never mind that 
the crimes for which he is being tried drew winks from Washington. There 
is Iran with its blood curdling anti-Semitism -- never mind that its 
nuclear agenda is set by US policy. Like children reading costumes, we 
know the wicked from the good. We make our threats, seize our booty, and 
name the enemy, not thinking that we ourselves have become the world's. 
For America's children, this is play. For their nation, it is war. Trick 
or treat.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/31/dance_of_the_demons/
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