‘You Cannot Imagine The Worst’

I had an e-mail exchange with a source for my upcoming book, who has become a friend. He is a scientist who was born and raised in a Soviet-bloc country, and immigrated to the US in his twenties. He wrote to tell me that he thinks I am entirely too optimistic when I say that I don’t anticipate harsh persecution of Christians and other dissenters. I reprint these excerpts of his words here with his permission:

I think that you, and most of Americans, deeply misunderstand human nature; what it really is capable of. That’s what I loved about Americans. Unbounded and unfounded optimism, always willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. No longer. I see pent-up hatred all around me. People are looking for an outlet to vent it. Both sides. Myself included.

… A Hidden Life — a movie I am certainly not going to see: Your description has already traumatized me beyond tolerable levels. From what you have described though, the ’judge’s glance at his own hands” was probably the strongest scene. It is a universal indictment. There will be a lot of glancing in the not too distant future. Think about it.

In the scene, the prisoner Franz Jägerstätter, his arms shackled, sits before a Nazi judge. He tells the judge that he is truly free. The judge sends him away, just before presiding over his sentence of death. After the prisoner walks away, the judge sits with his unbound hands on his lap, in the same position as Jägerstätter’s, and contemplates the invisible manacles.

My correspondent continues:

So what does it have to do with the Australia fires, you ask?

Contrary to the popular belief that a fraction of a degree temperature increase set the place ablaze, there is another explanation. For millennia the Aborigines have been practicing ritual bush burning. A while ago the practice was banned because of ecology concerns, environmental protection; to save some odd shrew from being upset. Dead wood accumulated. The whole place burned to the ground. (you can google for it)

We did the same thing to the culture. We banned ritual control burns. We allowed dead wood to accumulate. A single spark and the whole place will be ablaze. We will burn.

This is as rational an argument as I am capable of right now.

He concludes:

I think that you cannot imagine the worst because it looks so normal outside. One can be hauled to the gallows even when it’s sunny and warm. It’s hard to explain but when I look out and it’s all beautiful I always think about what it is trying to hide, what’s in store. As my long-ago girlfriend once pointed out, I am heavily damaged. I know.

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