“ History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” - Mark Twain
The highlight of the day/ evening was going to the play Retrograde at The Apollo Theater, a perfect extension of my questions yesterday. It’s about the choice given to a young Sidney Poitier to enter his film career on the white man’s terms—signing a loyalty oath and denouncing Paul Robeson during the McCarthy Era. We watch him struggle with all the justifications to sell out for his own personal advancement in his career. I’ll resist spoiling the end but suffice it to say the London audience rose to its feet at the end in sincere appreciation of the play, the actors and Poitier’s courageous decision. It was a good reminder that we already have lived through an era that demanded to either “give in or speak out.” Many people were hurt, but we eventually came out of it.
The nightmare of the McCarthy Hearings, begun in 1947 with many Hollywood directors, actors and screenwriters accused of being Communists and subsequently blacklisted, ended in June of 1954. By then, McCarthy had begun targeting people in the Army. On June 9, 1954, McCarthy began his vicious attack on an accused person. The man’s lawyer Joseph Welch answered the attack with these memorable words:
“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness ..."
When McCarthy resumed his attack, Welch interrupted him:
"Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, Sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
Those days were like these days—small people with great power attacking fellow American citizens and manipulating the public to support them through the tactics of sowing fear into the minds of people. Once the public could be brainwashed, they would t justify, excuse and support such outrages because of the “Red Menace.” McCarthy’s main assistant was someone named Roy Cohn whose Machiavellian strategy became the playbook for all dirty politics to follow. Indeed, it led directly to the rise of the Orangeman via Nixon and Reagan. (For more about Roy Cohn, see the play/film Angels in America and the film Where’s My Roy Cohn?)
The difference between those times and ours was that there was enough of a sliver of moral decency and conscience back then so that the question “Have you no sense of decency?” could hit that moral fiber. The hearings ended soon after and McCarthy was formally denounced by Congress.
Trying to imagine the same effect today, 71 years and 2 days later. Picturing someone standing up before the Toddler King and asking the same question. The response would probably be, “Of course I have no sense of decency and that’s what makes me great. Decency is only for weak people.”
That’s one of the hidden agendas that needs flipping. There are far too many people that associate kindness with weakness and that’s a dangerous place to be. In a gem of a book I picked up the other day, Question 7, author Richard Flanagan describes his father’s attitude towards life:
“ My father believed that you went under alone but together you could survive. When someone was down you helped, not out of altruism, but an enlightened selfishness: this way we all have a chance. The measure of the strongest was also the guarantee of ongoing strength: their capacity to help the weakest. Mateship wasn’t a code of friendship. I t was a code of survivors. It demanded you help those who are not your friends but are your mates. It demanded you sacrifice for the group. It is a deeply old, serious idea of humanity.…
…without kindness, we are nothing. Kindness and courage are synonymous.”
There are so many narratives to attend to out there that our heads are spinning. But one is the conviction of so many, led by the scared little boy who’s trying to act tough, that kindness is weakness. In response, I feel so many of us calling up our caring resources and gentle strength in the face of the outer weakness armed with clubs and guns. If we could only teach our children that kindness and courage are synonyms, that it’s more cool to be nice than mean, more courageous to be compassionate than cruel, we can restore some hope in this broken, broken world.
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