Déjà vu All Over Again?

[Joy]

I am reading M. Scott Peck’s book “People of the Lie,” The Hope for Healing Human Evil, and I came across this section and was absolutely astounded at the parallels between then and now. Sorry for the length - I know it’s long, but it is so captivating that I couldn’t help include nearly the entire section. My interest is more in the psychology of it than the politics and useful to note that back then it was the Democratic Party in power. And, it is another piece of evidence that shows me why God is obviously not a respecter of persons. But that was then and this is now, so I do ask myself though, what is the best direction to go in (or vote) now to combat this type of mentality? What do you think?

This section comes from the Chapter MyLai: An Examination of Group Evil, pp. 239-243, and discusses the MyLai event and how America became entangled in Vietnam:

“Our military involvement in Vietnam began in the period between 1954 and 1956, when the idea of a monolithic Communist menace seemed realistic. A dozen years later it was no longer realistic. Yet at precisely the time when it had ceased to be realistic when we should have been readjusting our strategy and with drawing from Vietnam, we began to seriously escalate our military involvement there in defense of obsolescent attitudes. Why? Why, beginning around 1964, did America’s behavior in Vietnam become increasingly unrealistic and inappropriate? There are two reasons: laziness and – once again – narcissism.

“Attitudes have a kind of inertia. Once set in motion, they will keep going, even in the face of the evidence. To change an attitude requires a considerable amount of work and suffering. The process must begin either in an effort fully maintained posture of constant self-doubt and criticism or else in a painful acknowledgement that what we thought was right all along may not be right after all. Then it proceeds into a state of confusion. This state is quite uncomfortable; we no longer seem to know what is right or wrong or which way to go. But it is a state of openness and therefore of learning and growing. It is only from the quicksand of confusion that we are able to leap to the new and better vision.

“I think we may properly regard the men who governed America at the time of MyLai- the Johnson administration – as lazy and self-satisfied. They, like most more ordinary individuals, had little taste for intellectual confusion – nor for the effort involved in maintaining a ‘posture of constant self-doubt and criticism.’ They assumed that the attitudes they had developed toward the ‘monolithic Communist menace’ during the preceding two decades were still the right attitudes. Although the evidence was obviously mounting to throw their attitudes into question, they ignored it. To do otherwise would have placed them in the painful and difficult position of having to rethink their attitudes. They did not take up the work required. It was easier to proceed blindly, as if nothing had changed.

“Thus far we have been focusing on the laziness involved in ‘clinging to old maps’ and attitudes that have become obsolete. Let us also examine the narcissism. We are our attitudes. If someone criticizes an attitude of mine, I feel he or she is criticizing me. If one of my opinions is proved wrong, then I have been wrong. My self-image of perfection has been shattered. Individuals and nations cling to obsolete and outworn ideas not simply because it requires work to change them but also because, in their narcissism, they cannot imagine that their ideas and views could be wrong. They believe themselves to be right. Oh, we are quick to superficially disclaim our infallibility, but deep inside most of us, particularly when we have apparently been successful and powerful, we consider ourselves invariably in the right. It was this kind of narcissism, manifested in our behavior in Vietnam, that Senator William Fulbright referred to as ‘the arrogance of power.’

“Ordinarily, if our noses are rubbed in the evidence, we can tolerate the painful narcissistic injury involved, admit our need for change, and correct our outlook. But as is the case with certain individuals, the narcissism of whole nations may at times exceed the normal bounds. When this happens, the nation – instead of readjusting in light of the evidence – sets about attempting to destroy the evidence. This was what America was up to in the 1960s. The situation in Vietnam presented us with evidence of the fallibility of our world view and the limits of our potency. So, rather than rethinking it, we set about to destroy the situation in Vietnam, and all of Vietnam with it if necessary.

“Which was evil. Evil has already been defined most simply as the use of political power to destroy others for the purpose of defending or preserving the integrity of one’s sick self. Since it had become outmoded, our monolithic view of communism was part of our national sick self - no longer adaptive and realistic. In the failure of the Diem regime, which we sponsored, in the failing of all our ‘advisers’ and Green Berets and massive economic and military aid to counteract the expansion of the Viet Cong, the sickness or wrongness of our policies was exposed to our selves. Rather than alter these policies, however, we launched a full-scale war to preserve them intact. Rather than admit what would have been a minor failure in 1964, we set about rapidly escalating the war to prove ourselves right at the expense of the Vietnamese people and their self-aspirations. The issue ceased to be what was right for Vietnam and became an issue of our infallibility and preserving our national ‘honor.’

“Strangely enough, on a certain level, President Johnson and the men of his administration knew that what they were doing was evil. Otherwise, why all the lying? It was so bizarre and seemingly out of character that it is difficult for us merely to recall the extraordinary national dishonesty of those days, a scant fifteen years ago. Even the excuse President Johnson gave in order to begin bombing North Vietnam and escalate the war in 1964 – the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’ – was apparently a deliberate fraud. Through this fraud he obtained from Congress the authority to wage the war without Congress ever formally declaring it (which was its constitutional responsibility). Then he set about ‘borrowing’ the money to pay for the war – diverting funds earmarked for other programs and extorting ‘savings bonds’ from the salaries of federal employees – so that the American public would not have to immediately pay increased taxes or feel the burden of the escalation.

“This book is entitled People of the Lie because lying is both a cause and a manifestation of evil. It is partly by the lying that we recognize the evil. President Johnson clearly did not want the American people to fully know and understand what he was doing in Vietnam in their name. He knew that what he was doing would be ultimately unacceptable to them. His defrauding the electorate was not only evil in itself but was also evidence of his awareness of the evil of his actions, since he felt compelled to cover them up.

“But it would be a mistake and a potentially evil rationalization itself for us to blame the evil of those days entirely on the Johnson administration. We must ask why Johnson was successful in defrauding us. Why did we allow ourselves to be defrauded for so long? Not everyone was. A very small minority was quick to recognize that the wool was being pulled over our eyes, that ‘something rather dark and bloody’ was being perpetrated by the nation. But why were most of us not aroused to ire or suspicion or even significant concern about the nature of the war?

“Once again we are confronted with our all-too-human laziness and narcissism. Basically, it was just too much trouble. We all had our lives to lead – doing our day-to-day jobs, buying new cares, painting our houses, sending our kids to college. As the majority of members of any group are content to let the leadership be exercised by the few, so as a citizenry we were content to let the government ‘do its thing.’ It was Johnson’s job to lead, ours to follow. The citizenry was simply too lethargic to become aroused. Besides, we shared with Johnson his enormous large-as-Texas narcissism. Surely our national attitudes and policies couldn’t be wrong. Surely our government had to know what it was doing; after all, we’d elected them, hadn’t we? And surely they had to be good and honest men, for they were products of our wonderful democratic system, which certainly couldn’t go seriously awry. And surely whatever type of regime our rulers and experts and government specialists thought was right for Vietnam must be right, for weren’t we the greatest of nations and leader of the free world?

“By allowing ourselves to be easily and blatantly defrauded, we as a whole people participated in the evil of the Johnson administration. The evil - the years of lying and manipulation - of the Johnson administration was directly conducive to the whole atmosphere of lying and manipulation and evil that pervaded our presence in Vietnam during those years. It was in this atmosphere that MyLai occurred in March 1968. Task Force Barker was hardly even aware that it had run amok that day, but, then, America was not significantly aware either in early 1968 that it too had almost unredeemably lost its bearings.”

[cricket]

The Hope for Healing Human Evil, and I came across this section and was absolutely astounded at the parallels between then and now.