Objection
One weekend day, Marjorie was running a slide projector in our living room. Click-chunk. “This is Deborah when she was a baby.” Click-chunk. “This is Marc when he was a baby.” Click-chunk. “This is Daniel when he was a baby.” Click-chunk. “This is Seth when he was a baby.” Click-chunk. “This is Nathaniel when he was a baby.”
Young me yelled, “I WAS NEVER A BABY!”
In my defense, I didn’t remember being a baby. Dear reader, do you? I guess we’ll both have to take it on faith.
Noncompliance
Right after World War Two, my father went to Japan as a doctor for the Occupation Army. He brought along his wife Marjorie, his daughter Deborah, his young son Marc, and his then-youngest son Dan. (Seth and I were yet to be born.)
Aboard the ship, Earl found Marc repeatedly throwing a paper airplane towards an open porthole. Marc threw, missed, and retrieved the airplane, threw, missed, retrieved. Marc said to Earl, “Try to throw this airplane through that porthole.” Dad aimed, threw, and the airplane went straight through.
Marc started to cry. Dad asked why, and Marc said “I told you to try to do it, not to do it!”
Playing Chicken with Earl
My father, Earl Hellerstein, told me this story when I was a young lad, many years after it happened. It was a home-front war story. During World War 2, my Dad served on a secret mission. His mission was to truck supplies for the armed forces. He did not know why he was trucking those supplies, for he did not need to know; but he did need to know what those supplies were, and where he was going. The truck he drove was full of high explosives. His destination was a secret weapons laboratory, in a small town in the American Southwest, named Los Alamos.
He did not know then, but he knew by the time that he told me this tale, that he was working for the Manhattan Project. Young me hung upon his words, wide-eyed.
It was a long drive, through boring empty desert. An approaching driver chose to break the boredom. He shifted into Dad’s lane and stayed there. And stayed there, and stayed there. He was playing chicken!
Decades later, I blurted, “What did you do?!”
My father mimicked holding a steering wheel. He said, “I did nothing at all. I kept driving, as if nobody was in my lane, and pretty soon, nobody was.”
Young me had two realizations.
First, that the other guy (and it was certainly a guy) made five mistakes:
1. He played chicken...
2. ... with an Army truck...
3. ... filled with high explosives...
4. ... for the Manhattan project...
5. ... driven by my Dad.
The second realization was that it’s a miracle that I exist!
Since then I have realized that I have no proof that this incident ever occurred, but nonetheless I know for certain, from personal experience, that my father was that stubborn.
This Essay is Hypocritical
Compared to such celestial heights - and abysmal depths -
of duplicity, most mundane deception is naive candor. How anticlimactic, then,
for this essay to end by denouncing itself!
For consider this essay. It praises hypocrisy as a virtue -
but does it possess that virtue? I say that it does just as much as it does not!
For if this essay is hypocritical, then its praise of
hypocrisy would express its own values; but that would be sincerity, not
hypocrisy. On the other hand, if this essay is not hypocritical, then
its praise of hypocrisy would be insincere, and that would be
hypocrisy.
If this essay is hypocritical, then it is sincere. If it is
sincere, then it is hypocritical. Therefore this essay is as hypocritical as it
is not. It sums to zero. Like hypocrisy itself, it has two faces. Its praise is
ridicule and its ridicule is praise.
That is why you, dear reader, need not take this essay at
face value. You are free to misinterpret this essay any way you please.
How convenient!
Sublime Hypocrisy
The hypocrisy-based community offers perfect freedom from responsibility. It revels in the triumph of the whim. Under its care, consequence is reversed; the innocent are punished, the guilty are protected, the able are ousted, the incompetent are rewarded, the virtuous are cursed and the vicious are blessed. By the power of pride, true is false and false is true, upon command. The hypocrisy-based community transcends veracity to attain impunity. O rapture!
You cannot find a more ancient creed than Hypocrisy; nor one more faithfully practiced by the reputable; nor a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Hypocrisy has the strength of ten because its heart is impure. Hypocrisy destroys virtue in order to save it; for what profit it a man to save his own soul, but lose the world?
What mere saint can rival Hypocrisy? For a saint can only redeem the repentant; but Hypocrisy rewards its worshippers without insisting that they change their ways. Why, then, bother with meddlesome saints? What need for repentance when you have Hypocrisy?
What mere angel can rival Hypocrisy? For an angel is a messenger, serving the truth; but Hypocrisy is its own boss, self-made, telling its own truths, creating its own reality. Hypocrisy is worship of itself, by itself, and for itself. Hypocrisy rushes in where angels fear to tread.
What mere creator can rival Hypocrisy? For a creator offers
possibilities, but Hypocrisy offers impossibilities. It proclaims a luxurious
mirage, spurious by design, free of meaning, ruled by whim, fraudulently
concocted out of Hypocrisy’s own emptiness. What mere creator would dare to
emit such chaos?
Whom then shall I compare
Hypocrisy to? Beyond saint, beyond angel, beyond even creator...
Whom could I possibly compare it to but...
... a certain politician, here unnamed!
Curing the Yet-Somehow Disease
Such is the healing convenience of absolute hypocrisy that
merely admitting its existence can ease a troubled mind. Consider this
anguished cry:
“The bill is called the Clear
Skies Initiative, and yet it increases air pollution.”
Consider the mental turmoil
expressed by those two words, ‘and yet’. They evoke cognitive
dissonance, shock, awe and confusion. The speaker is stunned by the mighty
chasm between rhetoric and reality.
Fear not, O sufferer; relief is
at hand. Know that absolute hypocrisy exists; and in the light of that
revelation, contemplate this statement:
“The bill is called the Clear
Skies Initiative, and therefore it increases air pollution.”
From ‘and yet’ to ‘and
therefore’; that’s one small verbal step, and one giant mental leap.
Clarity replaces confusion; what had made no sense before, now makes perfect
sense. Reason is no longer violated by the contradiction; instead it is
vindicated. The mind, re-energized, rejects paralysis. Blessed release!
Consider
these cries of pain:
“He promised smaller government, but instead
he made government bigger.”
“His party preaches fiscal responsibility, yet somehow
their budget is unbalanced.”
“He is eager to send others to war, even though
as a youth he dodged the draft.”
“He promised reform, but paradoxically
he appointed corrupt regulators.”
“His foreign policy ironically endangers national security.”
“He preaches liberty even as he works against it.”
Compare them to these bold roars:
“He promised smaller government, so of course
he made government bigger.”
“His party preaches fiscal responsibility; and that is why
their budget is unbalanced.”
“He is eager to send others to war, precisely because
as a youth he dodged the draft.”
“He promised reform, so naturally
he appointed corrupt regulators.”
“His foreign policy deliberately endangers national security.”
“He preaches liberty because he works against it.”
From bondage to liberation, merely by observing hypocrisy.
Imagine then the effect of participating in hypocrisy!
Lesser-Evilism
There’s a fine line between relative and absolute
hypocrisy. Consider the case of Lesser-Evilism.
“Choose the lesser of two evils”; that’s the classic advice
of the hypocrite sage. As a compromise it is perhaps forgivable. It doesn’t
pretend that its choice is good, just that the alternative is worse. An
uncomfortable doctrine; it promises at best a holding action, more likely a
disorderly retreat.
But now consider this mutated version of that advice: “The lesser of two evils is therefore good.” This theory, which I call Lesser-Evilism, is very convenient; for it guarantees a foolproof path to virtue. To be good, you need only be other than somebody else who is worse.
So if Paul steals $2 from Peter, and if Paul and Saul are
rivals, then isn’t Saul justified in stealing only $1 from Peter? Even Peter
will agree that’s only half as evil. And if Saul then kicked Peter, then wouldn’t
Paul be in the right if he retaliated by merely slapping Peter? Another lesser
evil!
Why stop there? $10 is less than $20; vandalism is not as
bad as arson; armed robbery isn’t nearly as scary as kidnapping; and so on. The
possibilities are endless! In fact Paul and Saul can lesser-evil poor Peter
straight into the grave, with Paul and Saul alternately not-to-blame.
Note that Paul and Saul are rivals in name, but they’re
partners in practice. Their crimes justify each other. Paul and Saul have a lot
more in common with each other than either of them has with Peter. And as for
poor Peter, he has only himself not-to-blame. After all, he got what he didn’t
deserve.
You’d think that Lesser-Evilism would fail when Paul and
Saul are both too obviously wrong to justify themselves or each other. But that
is precisely when hypocrisy becomes absolute, and doublethink takes over.
Lesser becomes greater; so Lesser-Evilism becomes Greater-Evilism, and the race
to the bottom accelerates towards its goal.
The trouble with Lesser-Evilism is that you can never be
sure that the lesser evil is lesser; but you can always be sure that the lesser
evil is evil. (If you weren’t, then there would be no talk of lesser evils.)
Thus Lesser-Evilism tends to revert to Evilism; the belief that all evil is
good. Evilism is, of course, a core hypocritical value. Once you accept it as a
moral axiom, then all else follows.
