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Bob Neal
The editorial page editor, my boss, had just told the publisher, his boss, about an upcoming editorial against capital punishment nationwide. The point was close to moot since it had been nearly 15 years since anyone had been executed in Canada.
The publisher replied with something like, “OK, but keep in mind that some people are just purely evil and for the good of society ought to be executed.”
I was deputy editorial page editor of The Montreal Gazette. My boss was liberal, the publisher more liberal. Hearing a man of the left say that some people should be killed sat me right straight up in my chair. I liked, back then, to believe that everyone was good.
Now, I know better. The movie “Dead Man Walking” (Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn) in 1995 persuaded me. In the movie, based on a book by Sister Helen Prejean, Matthew Poncelot, was a purely evil man who raped and murdered a woman parked with her boyfriend on a dark bayou. Poncelot was a composite of prisoners she had counseled.
Sr. Prejean wrote the book to argue against the death penalty. And she made Poncelot as evil as possible, hoping to show that good can lurk in anyone. But I couldn’t find a better side of Poncelot and I left the movie convinced that some people are irredeemable.
The past month has brought out perhaps the most irredeemable of all, Vladimir Putin.
On March 11, David Brooks, a conservative columnist for The New York Times, wrote that Putin can’t back down in Ukraine because he has created an identity myth that Russia is a great nation, that therefore Russians are great people and that their leader is even greater. Putin has identified himself with the myth, which includes the lie that the West is out to get Russia. Brooks calls Putin an identity entrepreneur.
Brooks wrote, “Putin’s identity politics are so virulent because they are so narcissistic. Just as individual narcissists appear to be inflated egotists but are really insecure souls trying to cover their fragility, narcissistic nations and groups that parade their power are often actually haunted by fear of their own weakness.
“Narcissists crave recognition, but they can never get enough. Narcissists crave psychic security but act in self-destructive ways that ensure they are often under assault.”
Ukraine is a war against the cool kids, he wrote. The cool kids didn’t stop the playground bully (Georgia, 2008; Crimea, 2014) before Putin’s narcissism took control.
Last week, I mentioned that I consider Wendell Berry the greatest living American. I won’t open a discussion of who is the most evil living American. No positive outcome lies there. Besides, I believe we know who would win.
My Christian faith tells me we are all beloved children of God. My secular experience tells me the publisher was correct. “Some people are just purely evil.” The best we can do is seek a ray of goodness in even the most evil people. Hard to find one in Putin, though.
Blanket news coverage of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine offers counterweights to his evil. Poland welcoming Ukrainian refugees. Lewiston food businesses making Ukrainian dishes and sending some of the proceeds to Ukrainian relief.
Still in Lewiston, about 150 people gathered on Sunday at the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in an ecumenical service to support Ukraine and its people. Many, perhaps most, of us left offerings for Ukrainians in need. The hymns, sung by people of many faiths and of no faith, were prayerful hopes for community. Blue and yellow are beautiful together.
Coda. On Tuesday, I became the Democratic candidate for the Maine House of Representatives from District 58 (Fayette, Vienna, New Sharon, Rome, Belgrade, Mount Vernon). As such, I cannot continue to write this column.
One might argue that I could continue so long as I avoided issues of state policy. But that would be wrong. And the Sun Journal is on solid ground in recognizing it as wrong. The potential conflict of interest is clear. If I’m in politics, virtually anything I write can have a state-policy implication. My words on topics such as, say, buying locally grown meat could be seen as supporting/opposing state agriculture policy. Thus as self-serving.
Should I win election, I will have a large megaphone to reach constituents, and they will have a wide highway of access to me. Should I fail to win election, I will ask the Sun Journal for my old spot back.
Thank you for reading some of these 159 columns dating from August 20, 2017. And thanks especially to those who have written to agree or to disagree with me. That is the basis of the political dialogue we need if we are to save our country. A tiny platform built in Lewiston, Maine, can help support that dialogue.
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Bob Neal has worked for more than 30 years in journalism and more than 30 in farming. Rest assured, he won’t be in politics for 30 years. Neal can be reached at turkeyfarm@myfairpoint.net.
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