The oldest cousin on my mother’s side of the family died last year. This weekend, those of us who could met in a little country cemetery adjoining a family farm just outside Fithian, Illinois. It was a poignant moment. My cousin was born just after the Second World War to an American soldier who married a British citizen. A cousin from Great Britain attended the funeral! That evening, the family had dinner together. Near the end of our dinner, I picked up my cell phone to look at the news, thinking I would learn about the evening’s events in Israel and Gaza. Instead, I learned that former president Trump had been shot. Like many people, I could not say I was shocked, given the vitriol directed towards him over the past decade.
This week, I intended to return to discipleship as the blog’s theme. Saturday evening, I knew immediately that I could not do that. I’m sure that I can’t add anything to the thousands of words written on the Internet, nor can I add anything to what former President Trump and President Biden have said in their respective statements. But maybe I can add something about our very diseased political culture.
The United States of America has a problem with political violence. Four United States Presidents have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. In addition, attempts have been made on the lives of Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and now Donald Trump. Presidential candidates have also been targets of assassination attempts. Attempts have been made on the lives of Theodore Roosevelt as a candidate, Robert Kennedy (successful), George C. Wallace (seriously wounded), and now former President Trump.
What does this say about our political culture? What does it say about our national fascination with violence? What does it say about the deluded capacity of Americans to believe that the ends justify the means?
The Myth of Redemptive Violence
In these blogs, I’ve had the opportunity to introduce readers to the notion of the “myth of redemptive violence.” The Myth of Redemptive Violence entails a belief that violence can be redemptive. The term was coined by a liberal Protestant theologian at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Walter Wink. Wink believed that (and provided impressive evidence for his theory) American society was and is deeply impacted by a subconscious belief that violence can be redemptive; that is to say, violence to overcome evil is warranted and even positive. Underneath the plot line of nearly every action movie we might see is this notion that violence can be redemptive. (One need not look any further than the latest James Bond movie to the theory at work.) Wink believed the myth of redemptive violence needed to be demystified to show how deeply misleading it is. For Christians, the myth is contrary to the gospel.
Here is how Wink describes our situation:
No other religious system has even remotely rivalled the myth of redemptive violence in its ability to catechise its young so totally. From the earliest age, children are awash in depictions of violence as the ultimate solution to human conflicts. Nor does saturation in the myth end with the close of adolescence. There is no rite of passage from adolescent to adult status in the national cult of violence, but rather a years-long assimilation to adult television and movie fare. Not all shows for children or adults are based on violence, of course. Reality is far more complex than the simplicities of this myth, and maturer minds will demand more subtle, nuanced, complex presentations. But the basic structure of the combat myth underlies the pap to which a great many adults turn in order to escape the harsher realities of their everyday lives: spy thrillers, westerns, cop shows, and combat programes. It is as if we must watch so much ”redemptive” violence to reassure ourselves, against the deluge of facts to the contrary in our actual day-to-day lives, that reality really is that simple. [1]
Recently, my wife and I watched a television show that exemplifies the problems with the contemporary entertainment industry. The show’s storyline concerns young people who can travel backward in time. Two different groups are attempting to influence the direction of human history. Roughly speaking, one group is portrayed as “bad guys” and the other as “good guys.” The good guys kill just as many people and act irrationally as the bad guys, except they are trying to “protect human freedom.” The bad guys are trying to control the future for their political and economic interests. The bad guys are mere caricatures of the people the media industry dislikes. The show is saturated by human self-assertion and ethical chaos. The characters struggle with the idea that there might be a higher power who controls the future, but of course, there isn’t one active in their plotline, so they must struggle to create a meaningful future all on their own. They have to make choices.
Deep in the moral incoherency of the show is what Walter Wink calls “the myth of redemptive violence” – the notion that violence can be redemptive if only the “good guys” defeat the “bad guys.” (It’s not redemptive for bad guys to kill good guys.) The result is a constant replay of a shallow, relativistic philosophy the writers were probably taught in High School and College. In addition, because the show takes the watcher back into history, occasionally, the watcher is treated to a shallow, cartoon version of world history, sometimes distorted.
A society dominated by entertainment reduces complex problems to sound bites and catchy lyrics. Gone are the human race’s fundamental moral and spiritual dilemmas, which are replaced by a simplistic one-hour drama. A media-saturated society allows people to view sex and violence without consequences. News depictions of our politics have become similarly shallow. If politicians often oversimplify complex problems, the media has largely lost interest in educating the public on the facts, which are usually complex and challenging to understand, finding it easier to give opinion pieces and distorted coverage of current events. Complicated problems cannot receive proper attention. They are too complex, and solutions require deep thought and careful weighing of alternatives. It is easier just to decide which side of the cultural divide you are on and download the talking points of your favorite candidate.
Politicians have reacted to the situation by taking advantage of it. By the middle 1970s, politicians noticed that it was much easier to get someone to vote against a hateful opponent than to get people to believe in the policy views of your particular party. Here, we have the genesis of what we have to call “negative politics” and “negative campaigning.” Negative campaigning takes advantage of our natural human fearfulness and anxiety to paint our political opponents as absolute devils who must be stopped at any price. Particular candidates are often described as devils incarnate (frequently using the word Nazi). Naturally, if I am fighting against Hitler, the kind of total warfare in which the United States engaged in the Second World War might be justified on a political level. Truth doesn’t matter if I’m slandering an evil opponent. Love doesn’t matter if I’m slandering an evil opponent. Morality doesn’t matter if I’m slandering an evil opponent. What matters is saving the world from this demon incarnate. After all, I’m saving the world. Therefore, the myth of redemptive violence justifies the intellectual violence in which I am engaged.
I’ve spent a lot of my adult life reading history. Henry Ford thought history was bunk. I believe Henry Ford’s theory is bunk. Those who study history come to see things from an entirely different perspective than those who simply listen to the evening news or their local politicians. As one writer mentioned, taking a long look at history helps avoid repeating it.
Just to give one example, any review of the history of Ukraine reveals that it has long been a battleground, often under partial or complete Russian control. The problems the West is having restraining the Russian invasion of Ukraine is nothing new. On the other hand, both Napoleon and Hitler crossed Ukraine to reach Russia. In particular, the Russians have terrible memories of the German invasion that precipitated the Second World War. After the Second World War, the Russians annexed Ukraine, and it became part of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union dissolved, Ukraine became a free nation with a substantial Russian minority population.
The Russians have, therefore, always viewed Ukraine as critical to their national security. When the United States began to do things like place troops in Ukraine and allowing the CIA to conduct operations and develop an extensive network in the country, the Russians warned the West that was a red line. [2] When we began to contemplate allowing Ukraine to join NATO, Putin warned the West that this was a redline. He would not allow Ukraine to become allied with what Russia views as a hostile power. We continued our activities in the Ukraine.
The easy view that the current war in the Ukraine is all Vladimir Putin’s fault is only partially true. The other truth is that the United States and its allies were complicit in what happened there and provoked the war. I have friends who believe that we should stop giving all aid to Ukraine because of the financial and otherwise “dirty history” of our involvement. I don’t subscribe to this view. I do believe we should seek a peaceful solution to the problem, saving the Western economies billions of dollars spent on military hardware. I also think we should learn from the results our arrogance and corruption have created in the Ukraine. We should stop the behavior resulting in costly and unfruitful conflict. In other words, this is not an easy problem to solve.
Closer to home, there’s no question but that our financial system is stressed because of the continuing use of deficit spending at levels that are not sustainable. [3] We are permanently impoverishing not just the next generation of Americans but several generations of Americans. On the left and the right, completely unrealistic proposals are sometimes made. I suspect that, to solve the problem, some kind of a middle solution will have to be found. Taxes will have to rise, and spending must fall in some areas. The question is how to do this wisely and carefully so that the interests of all Americans, particularly the most vulnerable Americans, are protected.
Conclusion
When President Biden and former President Trump urged their supporters to turn down the vitriol, they said the right thing. Of course, the question remains: Will they enforce this among their supporters? In a time of communication over social media, perhaps the more difficult question is, “Will all of us turn down the temperature of the political dialogue in our country?” All I can say is that I continue to get a lot of inaccurate and hateful spam directed against both candidates.
I keep in touch with friends from as far back as high school. In high school, I was a debater. In college, I studied philosophy, political science, and economics. In law school, I studied law. In seminary, I studied oral communication. My long-suffering wife has often reminded me when we are having heated discussions, that physical violence is not the only kind of violence. A knowledgeable person who is also highly trained can use their intellect and vocabulary to dominate another person. It took a long time, but I eventually got the point. There’s a kind of intellectual violence into which people like me can easily fall. The Myth of Redemptive Violence applies to all sorts of violence, of which military violence is only one type. Most of us are not in a position to employ that kind of violence. We are, however, capable of other types of violence. We can deceive. We can slander. We can undermine. We can twist the truth and words. All of this is forbidden to Christians and ought to be abhorred by those who love freedom.
Before I sign off, I will let everyone know that I am in the final stages of completing a book much different than any book I’ve ever written. It’s a philosophy book that outlines a kind of postmodern, constructive political philosophy, Sophio-Agapism. I believe the book will be finished sometime in the next several weeks since I have a draft back from the proofreader. The title is Illumined by Wisdom and Love: Essays on a Sophio-Agapic Constructive Postmodern Political Philosophy. I expect to sell about four copies of the book (if my children agree to buy copies), but it was motivated by a deep concern for our political culture at several levels. At one level, my problem is precisely the kind of politics that produced last weekend’s events—blessings to all.
Copyright 2024, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved
[1] Walter Wink, “The Myth of Remptive Violence” at https://www2.goshen.edu/~joannab/women/wink99.pdf (downloaded July 16, 2024).
[2] See, for example, Mark Episkopos, “CIA in Ukraine: Why is this not seen as Provocation? Responsible Statecraft (February 27, 2024), Spy War: Who the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Russia (February 28, 2024); Greg Millar & Usabelle Khursudyan, “Ukrainian Spies with Deep Ties to CIA Wage Shadow War against Russia” Washington Post (October 23, 2023). The amount of literature on this, both popular and technical, is huge.
[3] See for example, Brian Riedl, “Manhattan Institute, A Comprehensive Federal Budget Plan to Avert a Debt Crisis” Manhattan Institute (June 27, 2024); William G. Gale, “Five Myths about Federal Debt” Brookings Institute (May 2, 2019); James McBride, Noah Berman, & Anshu Siripurapu “The U.S. National Debt Dilemma” Council on Foreign Relations (December 4, 2023). I have deliberately referenced articles from all sides of the issue.