Reflection on Human Nature

Yesterday was Sunday, and I sat for quite a long time pondering what it takes for a person to act as Christian in his walk as he claims to do in his talk, and my derived conclusions about the matter weren’t at all comforting. Reality and the devastating wave of human nature capsized and inundated the fragile boat carrying my last perishable cargo of optimism. Reflections of over a half-a-century of dealing closely with human beings, who have pompously worn the symbol of Jesus on their forehead but, by their behavior, have displayed an affinity to Satan, poignantly gathered in a still stream of conscious recollection, which were as vivid as they were provocative.

If the Judeo-Christian God has freely granted mankind the agency to gradually destroy itself, by first eviscerating its own collective soul through murderous strife and then its material substance through a systematic obliteration of planet ecology, the great master of the universe must know that the world in on its last legs. Yet, with all of the pain and suffering that the practice of abject evil has brought upon the family of man, much more oblivion is inexorably anticipated as the creator of heaven and earth permits the procurator of perdition, man himself, to have a final say in the destruction of this third rock from the sun.

Amazingly, most of the violent deaths which have occurred in the past five-thousand years of human history have been attributed to religious conflicts, of one type or another, more than to any other cause. Recorded history, anthropology, and archaeology reflect this sobering fact. Though the physical, cognitive, and spiritual multi-dimensional nature of modern man makes it possible for a person to be both good and evil at almost the same moment, the conflict that will inevitably result from such an embroilment is utterly indeterminable. From a survey of the historical course of humanity, from Herodotus to the present, religious evil has manifested a much more pervasive influence over human affairs than the power of secular good. This type of crude anti-social behavior conforms exactly to the purest, vilest depiction of human nature. The old, but trite, biblical scripture, “though the spirit is indeed willing, the flesh is weak,” clearly shows the mortal struggle, or, rather, the excusable dilemma, between a greater good and a lesser evil, which has dominated every military confrontation initiated and controlled by underlying religious hierarchal power.

In 1945, when atomic energy was consummated with the success of the U.S. Manhattan Project, and suddenly there was no longer a genuine need for “the bomb” with the surrender of Germany,” General Leslie Grove, the chief military officer in charge of Manhattan, manipulated Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer into finishing “the bomb” through equating American military control of nuclear energy with what was “right, just, and decreed by God.” The report written to President Roosevelt by a group of concerned atomic scientists at the University of Chicago, called political subversives by the FBI and U.S. Army Intelligence, which declared the moral evil of using the atomic bomb against the Japanese, never reached the White House. It was, instead, intercepted by Grove and condescendingly shown to Oppenheimer with the general’s admonition that, “I’ve always believed that the Lord was behind us in this endeavor.” Grove knew that the inflation of Oppenheimer’s ego was the key to the ultimate finalization and use of “the bomb” on Japan. While most of the scientists at Los Alamos were ambivalent and morally uncertain about the military use of atomic energy, it was the cajoling of Oppenheimer and the play on the brilliant doctor’s vanity by Lesllie Grove that led J. Robert to push the project staff to its successful completion.

Invoking a Judeo-Christian mandate by deity, and propagandistically influencing a nation to overwhelmingly believe that God had singularly delivered the power of the atom into American hands was surely as dramatic a play on political pragmatism as the Nazis causing a nation of Germans to believe that the Jewish people were sub-human. As a result of Truman’s decision to use the atomic bombs, which were dropped on two Japanese cities, over 200,000 innocent Japanese people were murdered in the blink of an eye, and thousands of others died later from radiation poisoning.

And so it is that, even now, there are people pretending to be good when they are intrinsically as evil as ancient sin. As there are crimes in the streets committed by desperate men and women driven by physical and mental addictions to rob, kill, and pillage, there are crimes in the suites of high skyscrapers and regal centers of government calculatingly committed by cunningly wealthy men who publicly portray the epitome of moral and spiritual virtue. Which are worse, crimes committed by people driven by poverty and utter social desperation to rob and kill, or those planned in conspiratorial circles and clandestinely carried out by men and women of affluence? These criminally gifted charlatans are capable of deceiving their many supporters into believing that what they do is beyond reproach, when, in fact, their ultimate goals are exactly opposite to the public good. People such as James K. Polk, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Spiro T. Agnew, John Poindexter, Oliver North, Ronald Reagon and, of course, George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld are on this long list of the rich and infamous.

History records that Polk lied and deceived Congress into declaring war against Mexico in 1846. Wilson blatantly lied to the American people, pretending to support neutrality during WWI while secretly preparing for American entry against Germany in 1917. Franklin Roosevelt made secret negotiations with Winston Churchill for American entry into the war against Germany, while manipulating Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor with a foreign policy of economic intimidation. Then Roosevelt knew within forty-eight hours that Japan was going to attack at dawn on December 7, 1941, but ordered that the naval command at Pearl not be warned. Lyndon Johnson knew about the Pentagon Papers and lied to the American public about the status of the Vietnam War. Over fifty-eight thousand Americans died in the protracted Southeast-Asian melee. Almost everyone knows about Richard Nixon, Water Gate, and how Nixon should have been prosecuted instead of pardoned by Gerald Ford. Spiro T. Agnew feigned his honesty and integrity as a public servant and stole money from the taxpayers. Admiral Poindexter lied to Congress and covertly led the Iran-Contra mob in their illegal operations.

Oliver North, a disgraced U.S. Marine, lied to Congress and acted illegally to destroy evidence of his, and others, involvement in the Iran-Contra conspiracy. Ronald Reagan comically scratched his head and, after being asked about his involvement with Iran-Contra, looked convincingly perplexed and replied, “I can’t remember what I did.” And he was believed by Congress, when he was a supposedly accomplished actor.

Of course, we now come to George W. Bush and company, the oligarchy within a republic that has done more since “Dubya’s” inauguration in 2001 to criminally subvert the American nation than other presidential administration since Franklin Roosevelt. Iraq has become another Vietnam with every indication that a permanent American presence in the Middle East is imminent, and that an anti-American terrorist insurgency around the world is proliferating. There is, however, a profound and utterly disgusting difference between those crimes perpetrated in the streets and the crimes planned and executed from the penthouses. This is the awful fact that, while nearly all of the street crime offenders are arrested, tried, and convicted for their violent crimes, the Ivy League offenders, the Skull and Bones conspirators in the centers of corporate capitalism and state and federal government, are seldom indicted, arrested, tried, and convicted for their crimes. If anything, they are allowed to continue their illegal escapades with mere slaps on the hand if they, per chance, are called to account for their conduct.

To walk in the likeness of Jesus doesn’t require perfection, but, rather, that a person try, in every way, to be basically honest and to love his neighbor as himself. Of course, people trying diligently to walk the talk will err from time to time in their attempts to do what is right. But the “masters of deceit”, as the great deceiver, J. Edger Hoover, so vehemently penned, will continue to deceive the American public and work against the ultimate good because of their immunity in a republic that was originally geared to accommodate the wealthy and politically powerful.

Norton R. Nowlin holds M.A. and B.A. degrees from the University of Texas at Tyler. He lives with his wife Diane and works as a paralegal specialist with the Board of Veteran's Appeals in Washington, D.C. Mr. Nowlin is a regular op-ed columnist for the "Times of Snohomish County," published by the "Seattle Times"