The consequence of getting tough

I had a meeting for a student, today, which completely epitomizes the consequence of getting tough.

I had a student, today, who got in a fight. She also happened to be in special education. Which is a mess.

Instead of just owning up and saying that she was sorry and that maybe she just shouldn't fight again in the future (a topic around which there is, actually, quite a bit of real complexity for both kids and adults, no matter how much we try to oversimplify it with rules and laws against fighting), this kid's mom and social worker sat and made a hour's worth of excuses. She was bi-polar, she was overloaded with work, she was stressed, yada, yada, yada. There may be truth to the idea that stress makes us more prone to aggression, but I watched this girl wail on another girl in the middle of the cafeteria, provoked only by her talking and her "mean mugging," as the kids would say.

And I sat there the entire time thinking, "What good is this doing for this kid? What mom would do this? Find all kinds of excuses for a kids' behavior instead of just expecting them to say they were sorry and that they'll try not to do it again?"

But you know why people do this?

To get out of the punishment. There's no other reason, really. They may really believe it, at some level. But it is clearly to provide a rationale to keep from being punished. As surely as people rationalize popular governing philosophies to get rewarded and grab for power. They may actually believe it, too. Stalin really believed Communism. Hitler really believed Naziism. And they both rationalized the shit out of life to get what they were looking for.

Everyone does it. Kids. Adults, Politicians. Citizens. Mothers. Fathers. Employers. Employees. Teachers. Students. Scholars. Dumbasses. Everyone. We all do it. We all do it to get out of the punishment. Which is exactly what allowed the Nazis to maintain power in Germany. Because everyone was too fuckin' terrified to do otherwise. A page which contemporary liberals and conservatives have apparently taken from the playbook of Joseph Goebbels.

And we are stuck with it now and forever until people get the courage to stop doing it.

The truth is that the Commuists and the Nazis were not quite so different from us. They were just more extreme in their commitment to getting tough and forcing "progress," a mantle they both embraced as wholeheartedly as Democrats and Republicans embrace that mantle today.

The great tragedy of the 20th century was that Germans embraced that mantle of forced "progress" for more than a decade in the 30's and 40's. The Russian people, much more sadly, embraced it for more than 70 years. The Chinese and North Koreans have embraced it, now, for almost 60 years. Syria for more than 40.

And the democracies of the West whose example and criticism and engagement and fruits of freedom were so critical to the fall of the Nazis and the Communists in the 20th century and are so needed to free the peoples of China, North Korea and Syria, have, at the beginning of the 21st century, embraced the very philosophy that brought the dictators in each of those governments to power.

And the biggest lie of all was not Hitler's. It was the lie that it was all that force rather than our free will and conscience that led to more responsible lives, when it is so clearly the threat of force that leads students' like my kid, today, and those in power and everyone to avoid taking responsibility, if we could ever just be honest about that fact. With others and, much more importantly, with ourselves.

And that is the true consequence of getting tough. And it always has been. This one long lie that we've told ourselves and one another that we were and are better than we really were and are, all because of how much more people were forced to be better. The bigger lie we tell is how we are. That we are better than we are, not just that we were better in the past. All because of how others forced us to be as good as we are today. That all the force in Washington is clearly making Washington a better place, and all of America and the world a better place as a consequence. Which is why we need that power, today. To make others as good as us.

That is the biggest lie. Joseph Goebbels would be proud. For all of it. How tough we get. And all the lies we tell in its name. To others. And to ourselves.

Love,
Ben