The Good German and the Good American

Behind my childhood home winds a path. Through woods, forbidding and dark. So deep are these woods, that once you step foot on this path, you must walk it to the end.

Gather round and sit beside me. Tonight we are going to talk like old friends. Aren’t we tbat? Many of you know me, and I know many of you.

I was walking this path with my dear and wise mother yesterday. And we talked about many things. The child I used to be, the man I’d become, time and age, love becoming dust. The sun set and the stars spun in the sky. We found our way home, shuddering with thanks, to be out of the darkening woods.

There are three lies Americans are telling themselves right now. Good Americans. Do you remember the Good German? It means: those who weren’t Nazis, and so considered themselves perfectly fine people. But of course, today we ask: were they? I wonder: is this the moment in history where we are seeing the rise of the Good American?

Come and sit. We are just talking. Friend to friend.

There are the lies that the autocrats tell. They are for minds and spirits which are already broken. Then there are the lies that we tell ourselves. Which are more dangerous? The lies we tell ourselves become the very chains which shackle us. To our own deceit. And soon enough, we become corrosion. The lies we tell ourselves, the good people, in times like these, are the most dangerous ones of all.

I am not condemning you. I am just observing. Watch the firelight. Take my hand. We are just talking, old friends, about the times we find ourselves in. Let me tell you about the lies, even you, perhaps, are telling yourself. Laugh with me about it for a moment. Let us allow no heaviness here. Life can’t be borne without a little lie here and there. But what happens when good people tell so many they begin to live a lie in a terrible, impossible situation?

What a cute dog, said a kind old lady with dancing eyes, meeting Snowy at a cafe. I’m back in America. She railed at Trump. There we stood, ten minutes away from avenues patrolled by soldiers with machine guns under the orders of a dictator. The birds sang sweetly.

She said: but I’m not worried. Everything will be OK! After all, we Americans aren’t like the rest. And after all this is done, we’ll be back to what we were. I raised an eyebrow, and nodded amiably. I don’t meddle with kind old ladies. I guess it will, I reassured her. There we were, lying to each other, sipping coffee, and talking about Paris. Do you know that you can take your dog to the cafe there? I’ve heard about it, I said.

I wonder. My old friends. Do you tell yourselves all this? Some of it?

Let me then put a hand on your shoulder, and say something a little unkind. That I don’t want to say, but that must be said. Three lies. Did you catch them above? I’ve heard them from my American friends, colleagues, acquaintances, random strangers, over and over again. Good people. But.

The good German smiles. This Hitler, what a nuisance. Soon enough, things will be back to…normal. Everything will be…OK! There is a path that winds through the woods behind my childhood home in a beautiful little town on the edge of a city now under occupation by men with machine guns and men in masks.

In social science, there is a concept we call “path dependence.” And it means: once you get on a certain path, it’s hard to get off, and harder and harder with each step. Like the path behind my house, you are locked in. The woods are too deep and dark.

America is now on a path. We will discuss what kind of path in a moment, but first, understand that it is on a path. That much should be obvious, but when we tell ourselves that “everything will be OK!,” we deny even this beginning of clear thinking. And like many paths, this one has endings and beginnings.

Where does the kind of path America’s on lead? Here is where we wind through our own deep, dark woods. The kind lady I met used words like Gestapo and fascism. But do paths made of Gestapos and fascism end in an “everything will be OK?” More usually, they end in the unspeakable. Words like Holocaust or genocide or crimes against humanity. They end in large-scale horror which shakes history.

I am not saying that America will end there. But I am saying that even now, when I point this idea out to my American friends, they roll their eyes, or laugh in outright denial, or sputter in disbelief. What a fool, Umair, you are! I don’t remind them that I predicted all this. I only try to teach them how to think well. They are not doing that. Paths have beginnings and endings.

If, on this path, many good Americans can accept that they can now use words, employ concepts, like Gestapos and fascism, then why can so many good Americans still not accept where all that ends? Are there examples in history of Gestapos and fascism somehow ending in…positive and wonderful events? Chuckle, that’s a joke, and it was time for one, whew. Now, again: do they end in “things will be OK?”

Please stay here with me. Sitting beside the fire. We are just talking and chatting and laughing like old friends. There is no judgment in my words. If you are the good American, then the truth is that you can end up like the good German, for whom it was also impossible to conceptualize the reality of what occurred, and what was about to.

Interject. Be angry with me. I deserve it. I am raising a difficult and terrible question with you, and now let me outline it. Are we seeing the rise of the good American, just like once there was the good German? As a result of all these lies I see people telling themselves, which are now so widespread as to be social norms?

Norms change as societies turn fascist-authoritarian. The easy ones to spot are: the masses seduced by the autocrats cheer as violence, hate, and obscenity are normalized. The bad German sees the Gestapo checking papers, and sneers in a kind of twisted glee.

But there is another kind of normative transformation, too. The good German sees the Gestapo checking papers, and says: everything will be OK! They shudder, and pretend not to, telling themselves, we are different, and soon enough, everything will be back to…normal. And yet there they sit, amidst normative transformation. Averting their eyes.

Do you see why am I talking to you now about lying to yourself? Let me make it clearer.

My European and Asian and Canadian friends look at America. And they do not tell themselves, well, everything will be OK, and Americans are different, and soon enough, things will be fine again. Instead, they ask me, baffled, over and over again, every single day: do Americans not understand where Gestapos and fascism end?

Some paths are not to be walked at all. Because what they wind through—no soul can survive such a journey. From Orpheus to Oedipus, from Stalinism to Hitlerism, history warns us. Societies, like people, walk paths. Americans appear not to understand this very much if at all. They live their lives at the mercy of hypercapitalism’s monstrous predations, in which there is no real choice, just its illusion, and so they have little grasp of paths, or that some should never be stepped foot on.

Let me give you another example, a mundane one. I took Snowy to the cafe. It was cute. Worse coffee than I get in Paris cost me five times the price. Money has ceased to have meaning in America. But so has everything else. This happened, too, in Weimar Germany. And when a society walks this path, at last, human life has no meaning.

And America has been close to that point of existential nihilism for some time now. When life holds no inherent value whatsoever—when you are left for dead the minute you no longer have utility to the system—is that capitalism or fascism? It’s the transition point, in truth, and yet that’s where America’s been for decades now. Hey kid, go buy yourself a bulletproof backpack.

I see the good American every day. And in truth, I’m proud of them. My European friends have had better everything. From food to education to an economy to a life. Americans, the world doesn’t understand, have been impoverished in ways which are so deep they struggle to even conceptualize the idea of “life” in modern ways (hey, does that job come with healthcare?)

But my sympathies will be a paltry excuse in history’s eyes. They are hardly one at all, nor should they be. No matter how bad things have been for them, the world and the future and the past all expect more from the good American. Just as they did from the good German.

Let us remind ourselves of the lessons of the good German. To sit there and avert one’s eyes. To pretend to one’s self that “everything will be OK,” which is a way of denying what is happening before one’s averted eyes. To repeat this mantra to one’s circle, and thus reinforce the norm of widespread denial, and harden it into a kind of baffling optimism. To cheerily smile, even as the Gestapos check papers, the men with guns patrol the streets, and the dictator shakes in a more demented spittle-flecked fury ever day.

Good day, neighbor! Why, what a fine day it is! Are those camps over there? Why, my friend, are you looking in that direction at all? The birds are singing. The mothers are cooing over their babies.

And as this norm of lying to one’s self hardens, it says we must never discuss the fact that society is now on a path that ends in horror, atrocity, and ruin.

What happens if we lie to ourselves habitually, and we all do it, about the very things which matter most, like, say, life, death, existence, and love? Something in us dies. That death rips apart marriages. Friendships. Families. And societies.

What is it in us that dies? We die. Not the physical death of age or infirmity. But the death of the soul. Our courage—we slit its wrists. Our honor bleeds out from it. Our sense of power—we poison it, and grow powerless. We amputate the limbs of reason, clarity, and wisdom. And in the end, dignity itself shrivels to a husk. We die as full human beings, capable of being something better than automatons, going through the motions of a thing once called life. And automatons are just what dictators need.

This is a hard lesson to hear. Punch me, slap me, swear at me. It’s OK. We’re friends, and maybe we will laugh. What an asshole!

But I see it happening around me. At the cafe? I’ve noticed, and so have all my friends from around the world lately, something strange. Americans don’t even look at one another any more. That is a harbinger of the death of a society by self-deceit, because of course, we don’t look at one another when we are ashamed of who we have become. In America now, one can see not mere darkness falling, but blindness. The blindness of the soul.

The good Germans, too, averted their eyes. This is what they grew infamous for.

Sit with me, around the firelight. I have hurt you, I know. Please accept my shame, then. I will avert my eyes, and offer you my hand. I am sorry. I did not want to cause you pain, or more grief than you are already feeling.

But the world, the future, and the past are all now watching, like the three Fates. Who are Americans? Not the feeble-minded ones, but the rest. The good Americans. Are they…like the good Germans? Or are they something better than that? Is this all there is? Is it always like this? Always the same? Fevered masses falling under the spell of a lunatic becoming a demigod of hate, while the rest politely smile at one another, tip their hats, and avert their eyes, the shame seeping from their every pore like a silent poison?

The good American does not understand what the world does yet. In this silent shame, they are being humiliated by fascism. Even while they are humiliating themselves. They are keepers of a terrible secret, too shameful for any soul to bear. No soul, when a society has chosen a path with an end that history knows ends in ruin, can merely pretend to say: why, look at my stock market portfolio! See my fine home! The birds are singing and the babies squealing in delight! Why, everything will be OK!

To lie to one’s self existentially. This is the only true failure there is in life. All the rest is nothing. This was the mistake the good Germans made, and it was precisely where and why the 20th century’s brightest minds revolutionized philosophy and thought. Sartre’s incendiary idea of “bad faith” was the good German.

And we must ask ourselves now: are Americans living the very same castrated existential lie? Are they in bad faith with existence itself? Will they find the courage to stop lying to themselves in such shocking ways, which by now the world is baffled at, and rediscover what faith in existence genuinely is, which is the capacity for truth, as love? Or will they continue down the path they are on, still not understanding, as much as they finally employ words like Gestapos and fascism, where such paths end?

These are brutal and ugly words. Probably, they are useless ones. I wonder who will understand my questions and learn history’s lessons at all. Perhaps none of us do. Still, we have sat beside the fire. While the stars spun above us. And the moon shone down on us. And we talked, for one night, about what it means to have lived at all.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy!!)

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