Most people in the world agree on a common concept of justice: All sins have their retributions, and neither God nor humanity would allow our sins to go scot-free without just payments.
More commonly known as “crime and punishment,” deeply embedded at the core of all civilizations is the belief in “sin and retribution.” From the biblical injunction of “eye for an eye” to America’s own Hester Prynne in “The Scarlet Letter” and George Hurstwood in “Sister Carrie,” the idea is that we must pay for the sins we commit. If we escape the payment, our children should surely pay for their fathers’ sins.
Retribution (often as “revenge”) is the idea of balancing things out, and is popular in universal myths and lore that justice requires payment of our sins. In every Old World nation, both in Europe and Asia, the stories of sin and revenge make up the common stock of justice: That there is a price for all the transgressions of humanity, if not in our time, then in our later generations. Without such strong inevitability of the wheel of justice, no community can be maintained in a moral vacuum and uncertainty as a livable place. By believing in the logic of sin and retribution, humanity sustains its hope and reality of a just world.
But, there is one glaring exception to the sin-and-retribution precept in a just world and human morality: It’s the story of “American exceptionalism,” our central faith that America is an exception to this rule of justice. Yes, every sin has its price, for everybody in the world, but not for Americans. As a nation and as individuals, we believe we can “have anything we want” without paying the price for our decisions. We believe we can eat anything we want without getting fat. We believe we can spend the money we don’t have without creating debts. We believe we can survive the digital addiction with our humanity and community intact. We believe we can have a world-dominant military power without committing injustice with our power.
And, the worst sin of all, we confidently chose “a charismatic imbecile,” according to NYT Sabrina Haake, “a toddler with nuclear codes” because we believed we could elect somebody like Donald Trump president without paying a lasting price for it.
In America, our firm belief is that America itself is an exception to the common story of humanity. We believe the American nation was born as an exception and we as Americans are proof that our existence — so removed from the turmoil of the world — is an exception. Simply, all the world’s sufferings and pains of humanity cannot reach us. We truly believe that we can sin without its retribution. “America” is our eternal get-out-of-jail card for all its citizens: Our shores protect us from all the stupidity, illogic and inhumanity of our nationality. No retribution can reach us. As Americans, we are exceptional and we are special. Call us idiots, call us hypocrites. But that’s part of the glory and pride of being American. We don’t fear sins any more than we fear Satan or the devil. As popularized in “Sin City,” sin has intertwined with America’s idea of pleasure and happiness and the devil is our favorite team mascot. Who is afraid of good ol’ sin?
Let’s reckon with our latest sin-pleasure-happiness of having elected Donald Trump. According to the NYT’s editorial (Nov. 2), Trump: “Has persecuted opponents. Has bypassed Congress. Has sent troops into cities. Has defied the courts. Has changed election rules. Has ill-treated minorities. Has enriched himself . . .” In pre-Trump America, any one of such political seven deadly sins could have started impeachment proceedings. Everyone knew full well what Trump was going to do once in power (“Project 25,” anyone?), but damn the iron law of retribution, we still voted for the child-president, put all the powers of heaven and earth in his hands, and expected no revenge from wrathful history-God.
Democrats share in this peculiar American stupidity: that somehow they will regain power and will fix all the Trumpian wrongs. Puffed up with the recent electoral wins (Nov. 4), they think they will retake power from Trumpsters and return America to its glorious liberalism. They never ask: Would someone as clever in self-preservation as Donald Trump commit such terrible sins-crimes (currently seven, but many more unmentioned) and would walk calmly to the Democratic guillotine in some near future to get his, and his successor’s, head chopped off? Doesn’t Trump know that, in politics, what goes around comes around? Knowing all this, Trump would never let Democrats go near power if he could help it (and he sure can). Democrats may have won battles with voters but Trump wins war with his executive orders. With his great domestic magic wand, martial law is only one such signature away.
We believed that, in a nation where “you can have anything you want,” we could elect someone like Trump and get away with it. But the day we elected Trump president, we sealed America’s fate. Now, Trumpism is the executioner of retribution for our sins of arrogance, ignorance and stupidity: Let the revenge fit the sin.
Just now, “good” America is up in arms to save food-stamps for the poor whose poverty was created by its own beloved capitalism in the first place. In such hypocrisy, perhaps American exceptionalism — that evil and good can coexist peacefully in our hearts and in our national creed — could not truly exist in reality.
For our sins, history’s revenge on us has only begun.
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist for the Recorder, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.