About a decade ago, I had a job that required a commute of just over an hour to get to work. That gave me some time to think about things. I eventually recognized that certain areas of research and rumination led to serious doubts about meaning and value in life. I finally had an idea to combine the various topics in a writing exercise for 500-word essays. But I reached an impasse when I realized I had not wanted to write an overly long and complicated analysis of entire historical periods. (I also became extremely busy with the cartoon series “Scum On Top.”) So, these essays end where I left off, but they now serve as a foundation for most of what I’m addressing in "Scum (Back) On Top."
According to my notes, although I wrote the essays much earlier, I had settled on a preliminary title as dated “4-19-21: Republicans, the Radical Right, and the Final Victory of Nihilism: A Primer.”
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"A Problem of Nihilism: Essay 1"
For the past few years, I have thought that anyone who wanted to test their religious faith might consider three areas to examine. (This would also apply to test one's belief in a "purpose to the world."
Serial killers. In themselves, the extent of the crimes and the relative impunity with which the killers operate are disturbing enough. The number of them in the 1970s alone is startling. And while the atrocities of Dean Corlii are horrifying, someone like Gary Ridgway and his casual disposal of scores of victims is baffling. A meaningful order in things might seem a bit in doubt when a man can get away with killing a human being every other week or so for a long time.
Organized crime. Corruption is routine. Anyone can be "leaned on," bought off, or otherwise used. Any offender can be "rubbed out," which is at most a necessary evil. Tribal loyalty is the basis of ethics, though that is still tenuous, as "honor" can be a pretense for obedience. And as epitomized in the climax of the film "The Godfather," there can be quite a gulf between formal observance of religious ritual and "how things are in the real world." (Which is implicitly atheistic, with no God recognized as a barrier to any evil.)
Genocide. The mass murder of entire peoples. From the most ancient times, in tribal warfare, wherein people of a vanquished foe are utterly wiped out. Then with the rise of great empires that crush all dissent. Later, expanded wealth and technical knowledge led to naval voyages that resulted in "discoveries" of "New Worlds" and the spread of colonial empires. Native peoples are conquered and corralled and nearly eradicated, their victims to a great extent unnumbered, unnamed and unknown.
That anonymity and offhand disposal of the victims seem to be distinctive features of all of the above. A further instance would be that of the peoples of Africa, who were notably subject to slavery. Bought and sold as if they were a kind of livestock, barely named or known except as one would one's farm animals. And even long after emancipation, they could still be dispensed with in a lynching or an isolated unsolved murder here and there.
In Nazi Germany, of course, the victims were numbered and known, like inventory items. The process reached a level of efficiency that seems to have set a standard. In that odd case, the enemies were not so much "real" (in the way Carthaginians might be) as they were scapegoats, seen as specters of pure evil. (A delusion that came from decades of being exposed to notions about racial "health" and "purity." The threat came from anyone who did not "belong," from those deemed "unfit" or "unworthy of life." Or who otherwise seemed a "danger," likened to invasions of vermin or an "infection" in the "body.")
