Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

                                                  Part One:   Beasts or Brothers?

  Where is freedom today? America is clearly facing a crisis. Democracy is threatened for the first time since World War II.  President Roosevelt faced the threat of nazism, communism,  and socialism at home and abroad.  A major news network last week interviewed a foreign diplomat who suggested that America is no longer a democracy. Another major station suggested that public figures are chosen because of their celebrity status rather than their integrity. Will the American people actually elect a convicted felon for their president?  Perhaps not. Kamala Harris offers a  a different perspective: one of hope and rejuvenation. In our leadership today, more than ever, God is needed. Unwarranted aggression should never be tolerated. In as much as Netanyahu deplores antisemitism, his behavior toward Palestine parallels  Hitler's determination to exterminate the Jews. Palestine contain rich natural resources which undercut the Prime Minister's claim of terrorism in the face of countless victims. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt  suggests that the drive for nationalism is "one of the hasty explanations" for what was then German aggression, but today is Israel's attempt at outright genocide.  Arendt suggests that wealth without use constitutes needless persecution. A similar case can be made for Israel. According to Arendt, "Persecution of the powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring form human meanness alone." She goes on to say, "More serious, because it appeals to much better people, is another common-sense fallacy: the Jews, because they were an entirely powerless group could be blamed for them and finally be made to appear  the hidden authors of all evil"  (Arendt 3-5). Although Netanyahu was justified in  in his initial retaliation, there exists absolutely no justification for his continued annihilation of a people. Just as the Jews became a "scapegoat," in Arendt's word, so is Israel's  War Cabinet creating a universal victim in the eyes of the western world by demonizing and destruction. Palestinians, like the Jews years earlier, are now aligning themselves with leaders of countries throughout the world,  just as Arendt  described  the circumstances surrounding the Jewish persecution.  Just as the Jews lamented being "a people without a history," so is Netanyahu venting his anger or revenge upon the people of Gaza (Arendt 271). Furthermore, as  Arendt posits, oppressors always employ a  irrational ideology justifying their behavior, as did Hitler with the notion of racial superiority, and as Putin does with  desire for a Greater Russia. Similarly, by denying the existence of the Palestinian state, Netanyahu uses his faith to justify  untold aggression, despite the will of the people who are suffering so severely.  Sadly and ironically, Netanyahu's attempt at widespread obliteration of a nation and its people fuels the very antisemitism which he  claims so desperately to deplore. The following passage from Arendt basically epitomizes the dangers of regimes such as Israel and Russia today: "Until now the totalitarian belief that everything is possible seems to have proved that everything can be destroyed. Yet in their effort to prove that everything is possible, totalitarian regimes have discovered without knowing it that there are crimes in which men can neither punish nor forgive. When the impossible was made possible, it became the unpunishable, unforgiveable absolute evil which no longer could be understood and explained by the evil motives of self-interest, greed, covetousness, resentment, lust for power, and cowardice; and which therefore anger could not revenge, love could not endure, friendship could not forgive" (Arendt 459).

 In Richard Wright's The Outsider (1953),  an African-American protagonist rebels against any  institution, society or ideology that subjugates it citizens through  deceptive practices involving mental or physical force. In his quest for understanding, the hero  must find  his own form of existential truth  in the face of Communist, Fascist, and Capitalist forces,  all offering illusions of spiritual or material fulfillment. Damon Cross, the main character, struggles to overcome the racism underlying American society, as well as the guilt associated with the  heinous crimes he commits in the guise of social justice. Like the nameless protagonist in Ellison's The Invisible Man, he must discern between  the appearance of  truth  and the corporate or national will-to-power.  Cross makes decisions according to his conscience, despite the conflicts they create.  Like Raskolnikov, the hero, in the apparent absence of God, executes his own form of moral justice, which ironically results in tragic consequences. Today, countries face similar social and political conflicts. The United States Congress, for example, is torn between its loyalty to Israel as  a trusted ally, and Palestine, whose countless victims are suffering and dying as result of Israeli aggression. A similar scenario exists between aid to Ukraine and Russian aggression.   Partisan politics should never supersede the protection of human lives. As Wright suggests in the final pages of The Outsider, one man cannot achieve freedom alone; there must be a collective effort among races and nations.  Wright discusses his Cross' dilemma in the following passage: "If he was to be loyal, to love, to show pity, mercy, forgiveness; if he was to abstain from cruelty, to be mindful of the rights of others, to live and let live, to believe in such resounding word as glory, culture, civilization, and progress, then let them demonstrate how it was to be done so that the carrying out of these duties  and the practicing of these virtues in the modern world would not reduce a healthy, hungry man to a creature of nervous dread and paint that man's look of the world in the black hues of meaninglessness "(295). Cross, like Hamlet, commits crimes to purge a kingdom, a purging which  sometimes unfortunately proves inevitable.