EVIL

     Those who deny the concept of evil, its presence in our world, are playing a dangerous game. Evil exists. Period. Denying that truth will only lead to more tragedies of deeper and more intense consequences. The denial of it lends even more power to the evil within and without.
     Lately, I have been reading a wonderful book, Witness: Lessons From Elie Wiesel's Classroom. It is a most thoughtful and demanding book, highly recommended and to be read carefully and slowly. It is thought provoking and intense, often putting forth difficult ideas that need to be chewed upon and internalized.  
     Wiesel was an amazing man. He lived through a consuming fire and emerged whole, intact, yet definitely formed by that fire. It behooves us to think about what he has written and said. The concept that has most made an impression upon me is his discussion about evil. To him, it is alive, unfortunately. It must be watched, guarded against and defied and defended against. We must know about the madness it causes, and surprisingly, where that madness is, what it means.
     There is no being neutral about this. "Listening to a witness makes you a witness." Yes, it does, and from that simple statement we understand that there is no being neutral in this world and if one is quiet, if one ignores, one is then actively complicit in the evil that is happening.
     Everyone knows the adage re fire in a crowded theater. Yet here is the other side of the question. What if there truly is a fire in a crowded theater? Does one sit still, or sneak quietly out, allowing the rest to burn? Most emphatically no, but when we do shout, we must remember that we might be deemed mad, for sometimes the "fires" in the theater of mankind are so evil that they demand suspension of reality in order to accept its true dimensions. "...seventy years ago, the world did nothing while six million innocent people were slaughtered. How can this not affect us?" Wiesel believes that evil, all that is bad in this world, the movements that sweep a country and its citizens in huge tidal waves of murder and destruction, all emanate from this evil of the Holocaust, all roads leading back to it. Ignoring evil, no matter the dimension, allows that evil to grow and take on other proportions and other forms and emanations.
     One madness he speaks of is political madness. The leaders, a la Hitler and Stalin, are filled with "delusion and paranoia". They killed or otherwise rid themselves of their supposed supporters and allies. Their "personal demons" led to a kind of hypnosis, Wiesel states, driven by "fervor and hatred". It took over all else, even to the point of self destruction in the madness generated , in the determination, to achieve the insane goal.
     Unfortunately, those who call down on these madmen are often called mad themselves, deemed insane, not worthy of being heard, and in fact, almost dangerous to the world and its functioning. But these "madmen" must continue to speak up, to study madness, to have their own morality be so strong so as to impel them to speak up, despite the rantings of the world against them. It perhaps might even be called a form of madness indeed, but, Wiesel says, this "Madness holds the key to protest, to rebellion. Without it.....we can be carried along with the world's madness."
     Those who are evil in this world will do anything they can to impel their evilness forward. They will run over anything in their tracks. They will demean the "madmen" of good, those who will persist in the calling out of the truth, of baring the souls or lack of souls in these evil people and their evil plans. They will be exposed to ridicule, called names, even threatened with bodily harm, even unto death, but we need these people and we need to learn to listen to them, to pay attention to their words and cries.
     So, am I, and all the others, who insist on crying out against the evil presented to the world by Trump, are we "mad"? People tell us to ignore, to keep quiet, to keep our heads down, to wait for the years to pass and his term be over, but we cannot. To stay quiet is to allow him to continue to inflict damage upon the world, to cut deep wounds within the soul of mankind.
     We witness and speak up. We listen and speak out. We call attention to the evil in the world and yes, people, I truly believe that this man, this Trump, is evil. Should he have his way, get it entirely, we will be doomed. He despairs of the "others" and their "otherness". He hates them. He encourages hatred and prejudice and that includes all, for differences can always be found and magnified, forced to dance to whatever tune the evil wish to play. Hatred feeds upon itself, grows all by itself with the aid of silence and acquiescence by those who stay silent and by those who take part in it. They are the same thing.
     And yes, fighting evil sometimes is dangerous. Those who stood by the trains tracks and tried to give water and food to those crammed inside, those who stood by the tracks as they wound through the countryside and picked up the babies thrown out from those cars, rescued them, raised them - they fought evil. They were not complacent. But those who covered their eyes and followed the examples of the three monkeys, well, think about it. And in today's world, those who keep quiet re the "crisis on the border", the one that is real, not the fake one, well, put yourself there and think how you would like others to react then. See, there is no real difference among people save the outer characteristics. All want to live in peace, to raise a family, to contribute to the world, to have a future and it makes no never mind if one comes from the highlands of Guatemala or the cities of Ireland or the war torn countries of Africa. Blood spilled is all red. The bones are the same and so are the hearts and the souls.
     Evil is a difficult concept and we are kind of trained to erase this concept, treat it as a childish illusion as we age up, but this is wrong. Simply look around at the world today and I defy you, anyone, to say that evil has not surged forward in a bloody state of power. Evil exists and we are needed to fight it, to defy it, to banish it from our lives and the lives of others. A huge responsibility and one that will certainly not be completed in our time, or indeed in the time of anyone, possibly, probably,  but we cannot stand by the side of the road and play deaf, dumb and blind. Evil has a strong bite, huge and jagged teeth and they do not miss anyone when the time is right - or wrong. Remember that. Feel that. And then get mad. And grow our own teeth.