The Problem with Evil

The word "evil" seems to be trending once more. It's a harsh word, a powerful word, a sweeping word. There's no way to dilute it or qualify it; a person or a deed can't be more or less evil, just a little evil, moderately evil -- it's all or nothing. We reach for it in the same way we reach for the emergency brake switch on a train -- as a last resort, knowing that pulling that switch will be an irrevocable act.

"Evil" works for us when nothing else will. Like a pair of asbestos mitts, it enables us to handle things we could otherwise not bear to touch. "Evil" enables us to categorize and keep safe distance from people who would otherwise almost crush us with their horror, their unfathomability: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin. And it gives us unlimited power to denounce them, to condemn them, to convince ourselves that never, never, never would we have anything to do with them. Those who are "evil" are consigned to the world of devils and demons, the underworld of those whose motivations, personalities, influences, or thoughts no longer matter. How could they? -- they're evil.

But "evil" also blinds us. It convinces us that, while some judgments are just a matter of perspective or cultural context, others are absolute, and apply universally. And yet when, in re-creations such as that in the film Argo, we see the United States denounced in billboards as "The Great Satan," we smirk and think how ridiculous that is: "What, us, Satan?"

And this is the essential problem. In the relentless march of cultural and historical amnesia that our modern media-saturated world embodies, "evil" is the ultimate memory zapper. It convinces us that all we need to know about someone is that they were "evil" -- no more sense learning about their lives or motivations. Case closed. The fact that so many of the people we write off in this manner were, in their country and in their heyday, beloved by millions and widely admired, strikes us a irrelevant. The fact that so many people who ended up being "evil" started out being "good" seems merely an inconvenient detail. When we see women holding up their babies for Hitler to kiss them, or families weeping at the funeral of Kim Jong-il, we think to ourselves, what foolish people! How were they so hoodwinked?

But perhaps it is we who wear the blinders. "Evil" works so well in retrospect; it solves for us the problem of history. But if we really want to prevent future Hitlers and Stalins from arising, it's absolutely useless.  No one steps forward and calls themselves evil -- to do that would be almost comic, like Austin Powers or Aleister Crowley. No, the people who we may, eventually, find to be evil will always be people who arrived to meet some human wish or another: the wish for stability, the wish for prosperity, the wish for revenge, the wish for power. They will begin by being very attractive people indeed, so attractive that we don't see them in time to stop them -- or ourselves.

Panic over the airwaves

It's always been something of a miracle. From around 1920, when the development of signal amplification enabled the human voice to travel over radio waves, the thought that sounds spoken hundreds or thousands of miles away could by some mysterious process appear in our homes and cars as though the speaker were present, has been perhaps the first and greatest "miracle" of technology. Later, with the development of television, sights traveled by the same means, adding to this wonder, and shaping the baby boomer generation in a way no generation had ever been shaped before. But of course there were those who wondered: wasn't sending all this electricity, this radiation, through the air a sort of health hazard? Curiously, those who worried about that also worried about the tawdry nature of much mass entertainment, or the potential of words and sights so widely transmitted to alter or control our minds.

In a debate in the Radio Mirror back in 1934, Charles Shaw of NYU tussled with no less a figure than Nicola Tesla, the man who in many senses invented radio, long before Marconi. Shaw voiced the concern that, since radio engineers in close proximity with transmission equipment seemed to have higher body temperatures, that perhaps radio waves were going to bake us all while we slept! Not only that, but its noise and drivel "lowered our cultural standards." Tesla was left to point out that radio waves were far too weak in amplitude, and the wrong frequency, to do any cooking, and as to radio's content, wisely noted that "You can't blame lowering our culture on radio," he insisted, "blame it on yourself and myself. The type of program that comes over the air is the type you and I want to listen to."

A light pole in San Francisco

But in recent years, alas, these same two intertwined fears have arisen again about cell phone frequencies. Cell phones were "cooking" our brains, they said, or were leading to an increase in cancer. The panic has increased with the implementation of "5G" technology -- particularly since 5G will require many more antennas to give its higher frequencies coverage. Ironically, these higher frequencies are exactly the reason that 5G is harmless; it is much less able than lower frequencies to penetrate solid objects, which would include peoples' skulls and buttocks. The human body is impenetrable to frequencies above 70 megahertz, a fact which Tesla took advantage of in an experiment that demonstrated their safety. He took alternating current of a very high frequency, but a very low amplitude (power) and used it to electrify himself and others (Mark Twain among them). The high frequency prevented its penetrating the body, and the low amplitude eliminated any other risk of harm. And yet, a lightbulb in the hand of such an electrified person would glow!

Mark Twain in Tesla's lab in 1894

People today don't get much of an education in these matters, it seems. They tremble in fear of the word "radiation," not understanding that all sound and light and heat are also radiation. They confuse high-level radiation, which is known as ionizing radiation (x-rays, gamma rays, etc.) which can be lethal, with the many forms of low-level radiation (infrared waves, radio waves, etc.) which are largely harmless. They also don't understand frequency and amplitude, the two fundamental principles at stake. As noted, the higher frequencies of the radio band are in fact the weakest in terms of being able to penetrate things -- this is why, for instance, submarines use a very low frequency, so that their signals can penetrate the deep ocean, and even the earth itself. At the other end of the spectrum, so-called "short" waves are useful, since they can't penetrate the earth's ionosphere, but bounce off it instead, increasing their potential range. Getting back to cellular signals, there's the fundamental fact that, the higher the frequency, the more information they can carry, and more and more information is what's wanted. So, some years ago, the FCC moved television off the old VHF (Very High Frequency) and UHF (Ultra High Frequency) bands, and sold them off to cellular carriers. UHF peaked out at 3 GHz, and the new services will utilize the top end of UHF, and on upwards to 6 GHz. So at least a portion of this "new" frequency will be the same old frequency that once brought you midnight horror movies and Bowling for Dollars.

And then there's amplitude. The 5G signal will be far too low in energy to do any damage. With old-fashioned single transmitter systems such as radio, many watts of power were needed to give the signal a wide range, but the 5G antennas that spike these worries are in fact very very low power -- they're essentially "repeaters," picking up and rebroadcasting a very low power signal to give it range. No cell phone company would waste more electricity on these than needed to power these mini-antennas -- and even if they tried, the FCC's regulations on phones would prevent them from doing so. The current regulation for phones is for an absorption rate of 1.6 watts per kilogram of mass, which isn't enough amplitude to warm the surface of your skin more than a tiny fraction of a degree, assuming your cellphone is in direct contact with it. All phones sold in the US must meet this standard. Ultimately, these high frequencies, because they can't penetrate the body, are dissipated in the form of heat -- and if it's heat you're worried about, the electric hot pad you use for your sore neck puts out hundreds of thousands of times more.

All this leaves us with just the content of our signals to worry about. And here I would agree with Tesla -- we get what we deserve. Even when, at times, it seems we don't want it -- since now, with all our clicks tracked in one way or another, the system itself works to try to predict our desires. And yet, despite the screaming echo chambers of the 'net, it's just the sound of our own voice, really -- and we have only ourselves to blame for it if we listen.

Fake News and the Death of the Donut

Many years ago -- in another age, an age where newspapers, television, and magazines thrived, and journalism schools were filled with bright young students, one commonly taught principle of fair reporting used the humble donut as its metaphor. The center of the donut -- the hole -- represented facts and matters of general consensus: George Washington was the first president of the United States, men walked on the moon on July 20th, 1969, and vaccines were vital to winning the war over dangerous childhood diseases. No one disagreed -- then, at least -- about these matters, and there was no need to present alternative views about them.

The donut itself consisted of matters about which reasonable people might disagree: Was the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit a good idea? Was Sir Winston Churchill the greatest British Prime Minister? Should we get rid of daylight savings time? When an issue fell within the donut, responsible journalism called for balance, and the representation of opposing views. Then there was the outside of the donut. Earth was colonized by aliens in 40,000 B.C. -- the Holocaust never happened -- Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated, but lived to the age of 87 in a secret log cabin in the hills of Virginia. These ideas were the stuff of the "lunatic fringe," and the proper way for serious journalists to respond to them was not to respond to them at all. This model, of course, assumed that journalists -- because they alone had the opportunity to disseminate news to millions of people -- could and should function as gatekeepers of our shared sense of reality. In such a day, Walter Cronkite could reasonably say, "And that's the way it is," knowing that the stories on the evening news had been carefully reported, fact-checked, and vetted before they went on the air.

We shouldn't necessarily blame the journalists of today for the death of the donut. It's still there, to some extent, at the larger national and international newspapers, and some (though not all) network news shows. But the gate that the press was keeping was in a wall -- a wall representing the cost of disseminating news, printing papers, erecting transmission towers and building television studios -- that simply no longer exists. There's no need for any news to pass through this gateway; like the lovely wrought-iron gate of Cremorne Gardens in London, it stands by itself, is easily walked around, and the gardens to which it once led have long vanished. There's no chance of such a barrier being rebuilt in the future, and none of the efforts of social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter are going to have much effect, since anyone who wants to can find a workaround to whatever filters or barriers they erect.

Is there any hope at all? Well, certainly the remaining outlets of old-fashioned journalism should be taking the lead by calling a lie a lie, and continuing to robustly fact-checking their own stories. Sites such as Snopes.com can help, and the increase of traffic there is a healthy sign that some people actually do want to check up on an implausible or dodgy story they've heard. But what it really means is that everybody is going to have to do their own checking, and that in addition to teaching mere facts, the task of education, now more than ever, must be to give students the tools to sort out the wheat of information from the chaff of useless babble, and the poison of disinformation, rumor, and conspiracy theories.

There's only one problem with this hope, of course -- that those who write, share, and consume those poisons have the same robust tools to keep reality from their gates as do those who favor reality. It's going to be a bumpy night.

Dissolution

 Throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, there was one common understanding, in the United States at least: a college education was a good thing. Returning soldiers took advantage of the original GI Bill, and their children took advantage of what was, for a time, a very affordable college education (at least at public colleges and universities). One result was the greatest economic boom in the nation's history, but another was its most educated public. It would be hard for anyone back in the 1980's, (to pick a decade) to imagine a time when college attendance wasn't a reachable ideal and an unquestioned good for anyone who could manage it.

Today, a college education is has been questioned on every front; tuition has risen dramatically, and pundits -- who seem to take for granted that the best way to measure the value of something is in the increased earning power it confers -- declare that a useful trade-school education would be a much better deal. We're told that we have to let go of the idea that college is for everyone, as pressure mounts on public institutions (public in name only, as decades of cuts by state legislatures have meant that most state colleges and universities receive less than 1/3 of their funding from the state).  And now, at the behest of the current administration, there's an active attack on the fundamental existence of universities, one aimed -- so far -- at the wealthiest and most prestigious among them. Various reasons are offered for this antipathy, but the likeliest one, to my mind, is that it's just part of a broader anti-intellectual drive, of the sort that's been seen many times before in authoritarian regimes.

All this puts me in mind of a much earlier moment when a large number of institutions whose work was universally understood as contributing to the greater good came under government pressure to prove that worth. Secured in beautiful gothic buildings, supplied with dormitories for their residents, dining  halls for their meals, and chapels for their worship, the inhabitants of these institutions little dreamt that, in a few short years, their buildings would be reduced to roofless rubble -- and by their own king. Thomas Cromwell (yes, that one -- whose career is revisited in Hilary Mantel's recent novels) sent out "visitors" to investigate the practices at these places, and the reports that came back were damning: the people there were not following their own rules, they were living lives of suspicious comfort, and worse yet -- by providing spiritual services to their neighbors -- like the loaning of blessed girdles to aid women in childbirth -- they were perpetuating false superstitions and scurrilous beliefs.

The king, Henry VIII, used these reports as the justification for what would, earlier in his own reign, have been an unthinkable act. He, with the collusion of Parliament and a few strokes of a pen, dissolved all the monsateries of England, seized their buildings and properties, and sent troops to round up the valuables. The golden altar furniture and books were added to the King's own collections, while the buildings and land were given to his political allies as their personal estates. The monks and nuns were supposed to receive pensions, but there seems no record of many collecting them. What the King's men left behind, local villagers pillaged, finding new uses for door-hinges and window glass. The lead that had protected the roofs was rolled up and hauled away (it being a valuable metal at the time), and before long, the unprotected beams and boards rotted and collapsed.

To add to the irony, some of the funds raised by some of these closures were used to fund colleges and endowments, including what later became Christ Church at Oxford.

They shall not pass!

There's been a lot of talk in the press these days, with the rise of he-who-must-not-be-named in American politics, about how to stop fascistic, totalitarian figures from coming into power. It appears to be something that folks in the US and UK haven't had to deal with, and so they must look to Germany, or Spain -- but in fact, that's not true at all.

Back in Britain in the 1930's, there was a divisive political leader whose rallies were beginning to cause concerns. A former political liberal, he'd taken to denouncing his previous views; at massive indoor rallies (including one at the Albert Hall), he stirred his listeners to passionate cheers by denouncing immigrants, Jews, and a shadowy cabal of forces that were driving the common man down. He love to egg on protesters at these rallies, and had special squads of "stewards" to rough them up and throw them out, but in fact they served a purpose. Indeed, he credited them with making his speeches all the more effective, even saying he looked forward to them.

The man in question was Sir Oswald Mosley. And Britons weren't quite sure what to make of him; though many despised his views, his party -- the British Union of Fascists -- was granted the same rights as any other, and in the early 1930's their polling numbers were on the rise, although they did not yet have any elected member of Parliament. Mosley, inspired by visits with Mussolini and Hitler, decided to give his party a paramilitary flavor, initially going with plain black futuristic uniforms, but later graduating to jackboots and a peaked cap (for Mosley himself at least). From their large indoor rallies, they graduated to outdoor ones with marches; when Mosley was clobbered with a flying brick by protesters at one, he wore his bandages as a cap of pride. It was part of his strategy to march directly into areas, such as the East End of London, where the bricks were most likely to fly; this both fed his sense of justified anger, and forced the police into serving as his own personal security.

Things came to a head in October of 1936; Mosley had planned a rally and march through the East End, and had pulled out all stops; his new uniform was ready, as were many of his followers, some of whom rode in specially fortified vans. The Metropolitan Police, under the leadership of Sir Philip Game, mustered out 6,000 officers, one of the largest forces since the days of the Chartist rallies in the 1840's, but even then it soon became clear they were stretched thin; attempts to disperse a crowd of nearly 100,000 East Enders proved impossible. Those opposed to Mosley, whose planned route would have taken him down Cable Street, erected barricades of bricks and sticks, along with a lorry and some construction equipment they'd procured from a nearby builder's yard. They hoped to block the march by their mere presence, though they were also prepared to fight; one witness described men wrapping barbed wire around chair-legs as improvised weapons. The chant of one and all was simply this: "They shall not pass!"

In the end, Sir Philip Game persuaded Mosley to call off that part of his plans, and to march instead back where he'd come from to Hyde Park. Public alarm over the events led to the passing of the Public Order Act, which although it did not outlaw Mosley's party, prohibited political uniforms such as those the "blackshirts" had favored. When Britain and Germany went to war, the BUF was banned, and Mosley and many of its other leaders were imprisoned for the duration. One, though, did escape: the scar-faced William Joyce, who as "Lord Haw-Haw" broadcast mocking ripostes to nearly every one of Churchill's radio speeches. After the war, Joyce was convicted of high treason, and hanged at Wandsworth Prison. Sir Oswald returned to political life, though in his one election -- for Kensington North in 1959 -- he polled only 8% of the vote with an anti-immigration platform that included deporting those from the West Indies. 

Proclamations

There is something innately attractive in the power of a single pen, especially for a ruler with tyrannical tendencies -- why bother with Parliaments and Legislatures when one can simply command one's subjects to obedience in whatever matter one wishes? One sovereign who was especially attracted to this option was Henry VIII, who issued three hundred and eighty-seven of them; in them, the king -- always speaking with a royal "we" -- commanded obedience in everything from prohibiting heretical books to setting the prices charged by fishmongers to declaring war on France. In his use of these instruments, Henry enjoyed several advantages over previous monarchs, the foremost of which was the invention of the printing press. Richard Pynson, appointed printer to Henry VII, continued in that role with his successor, receiving an annuity of £4. His royal appointment also came in handy when the King was in a book-banning mood, as an exception was always made for his Majesty's printer.

It's not certain how many copies of any given proclamation were printed, but the records seem to indicate that enough were made so that, in each of the several key cities and market towns of England, a copy could be posted by the market cross for all to see. Of course, at a time when literacy rates were quite low, their direct effect may have been limited, but it was often commanded that they be read aloud, that all would understand. In several instances, they were first promulgated in London with a fanfare of trumpets before being read aloud, presumably in stentorian tones. They were, at the same time, sometimes subject to later defacement or theft, in some cases leading to charges against those responsible.

Along those lines, on key question about proclamations was how they were to be enforced. If, as it happened, the proclamation specifically instructed the King's agents or local authorities to act, they would of course have complied, but in other cases it's much less clear -- how, for instance, were women to be prevented from reading Holy Scripture aloud, or punished if they did? One venue available to Henry VIII was his own special tribunal, the Court of Star Chamber, and indeed its records contain numerous actions brought against persons who disregarded a proclamation. In one instance, regarding a proclamation of 1530 "Prohibiting Erroneous Books and Bible Translations," it was noted that one "John Croker" was "cited for keeping a New Testament contrary to the King's proclamation." Readers of Hilary Mantel's historical novels, or viewers of their BBC adaptations, will not be surprised to learn that Thomas Cromwell, who sat in the Star Chamber court, was particularly concerned with any visible instances of non-compliance; the court's records include prosecutions for subjects for shipping all manner of goods -- barley, corn, beer, and other grains -- "contrary to proclamation."

And yet, from the King and Cromwell's perspective, it apparently seemed that the enforcement mechanism of these proclamations was not as robust as was needed, since in 1539 they drafted, and Parliament passed, the "Proclamation by the Crown" act -- giving the King's edicts the same force as if they had been Parliamentary statutes. Blackstone, in his Commentaries, called it ""a statute, which was calculated to introduce the most despotic tyranny; and which must have proved fatal to the liberties of this kingdom, had it not been luckily repealed." This repeal did not, of course, prevent proclamations from being issued; my three-volume set of Tudor Royal Proclamations goes up through a proclamation of 1553,  the final year of Edward VI's brief reign, which was promulgated on June 28th; a week later, Edward was dead. The proclamation permitted merchants to carry £4 out of the realm.