Quotes That Help Us Understand Our Troubled Times, Part ll

The reader is advised to read part l of this essay, "Quotes to Help Us Understand These Troubling Times, Part l," before proceeding to this essay, the final part of a two-part series.  The first part is available on the internet or by googling my blog, thomasdorsett.blogspot.com.

On separate occasions, four quotes came to my mind, pertinent to the current political difficulties of the United Sates.  I discuss each of them in the context of current events.   They are, however, quotes that have universal applications; one is invited to apply them to personal as well as to societal histories, both past and present.

The first one, discussed in Part l, is a ray of light that scatters darkness: “What hands build, hands can tear down.”  This quote, from Schiller’s William Tell gives us hope, especially when interpreted figuratively: bad constructs can be deconstructed; bad situations can be reversed when good people join hands and change things for the better. The second quote is not optimistic, but it is a fact that must be faced, lest we become ineffective and naive.

Quote 2:  “Was ist das, was in uns lügt, hurt, stiehlt und mordet?” “What is that within us which lies, whores, steals and murders?”

This quote comes from the German playwright Georg Büchner, who died at the age of 23 from meningitis, barely older than Keats was when he died.  Büchner remains famous principally for two powerful plays, Danton’s Death (1835) and Woyzek (1837), the later the basis of a great twentieth century opera by Alban Berg.  Büchner was especially sensitive to the abuses of the poor and powerless by the rich and powerful. 

This quote, however, is spoken by a doomed aristocrat, Danton.  In the play, his thirst for justice led him to become an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution. As Robespierre’s Reign of Terror progressed,  he became disillusioned by all the slaughter.  His opposition to Robespierre resulted in his execution.

He utters the quote at a time when he is confronted by horrors that followed the revolution.

Danton’s words are a good counterweight to the words of Tell.  The play was written only a little over three decades after Schiller’s, but the knowledge of the good and evil that exists in all of us gives Büchner’s play a much more modern, and less naive view of the world. 

The question which the quote asks is an existential one.  Notice that the playwright states that evil lies in us, and thus cannot be explained away by a bad upbringing or by political oppression.  In Buddhism, the so-called three hindrances, greed, hate, and delusion are like three arrows which have wounded us. It doesn’t matter if a bad upbringing was the archer who wounded with arrow A; it doesn’t matter whether oppression was the archer who wounded with  arrow B; it doesn’t matter whether a bad education was the archer who wounded with arrow C—the important thing is to remove the arrows and heal.

How do we accomplish that?  By individual and collective acts of love and wisdom, of course—but I’m no Schiller, I know well that this is never easy.

We need to temper Schillerian optimism with Büchnerian realism.  When we realize defects lie in all of us, we realize that we may be part of the problem.  Our consciences must decide, however, which course of action is more informed by love and wisdom rather that by the vices Danton lists.  Sometimes the decision is rather easy…

…as in Trump’s case.  He lies all the time; he whores in the sense that he’ll say or even do anything to receive adulation from his followers; he steals in the sense that he has cheated employees many times--that’s three out of four.  And he just might murder our democracy and undermine everything that does make America great. Why this man, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and, having become the most powerful person in the world, is still controlled by his needy inner toddler remains an existential mystery.  I’m quite sure that both Schiller and Büchner would have agreed: Trump is unfit to be president.

Quote 3: “Edel sei der Mensch/Hilfreich und gut!"  "Every human being should be noble,/helpful and good!”

These are the first two lines of a famous poem, "The Divine," by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), widely acknowledged to be the greatest of all German authors. “Edel,” the first word, “Noble,” is followed by “sei”, the imperative form of the verb “to be”.  But this isn’t simply a command to be good.  “Sei” is also third-person subjunctive, denoting possibility.  Therefore, the line should be translated as “May every human being be noble,” or “Every human being should be noble.”

The conditional sense here is crucial.  If Goethe used the third person present indicative, the line would read, “Every human being is noble," etc.” Goethe was well aware not only of the good in humanity, but of the moral failings and even depravity in human beings as well.  He was not naive; we, with the horrors of the past century fresh in our minds, have even less reason to be naive than he did.

An outstanding example of the unwarranted replacement of “is” with “should be” is President Obama, especially during his first term.  He seemed really to have believed that all he needed to do was to propose good legislation, after which both sides of the aisle would, after debate, come up with something workable, possibly something even better.  

At the beginning of his first term, Democrats had the majority of both houses of Congress.   President Obama could have easily passed a better version of the Affordable Care Act, maybe one characterized by a single payer, a.k.a. “Medicare for all.”  (I assure you that we physicians—my wife and I are both pediatricians—are plagued by all the insurances we have to deal with,  which have to be billed separately—and, most annoying of all, have regulations that differ from one to the other.)

But no—the president wanted a consensus.  He believed that all decent politicians would see the necessity of health insurance, and would work together to assure the passage of a law that both parties could live with.  We know how that turned out.

President Obama should have studied Foucault, who asserted that the thirst for power is at the basis of  a good deal of human activity—in the case of politicians, it is paramount. A synonym for power, is, of course, money.  Republicans correctly saw that a health care law would demand increased taxes on the wealthy, and, as representatives of the wealthy, any health care law would therefore be intolerable.

                     President Obama, 2008 and 2016

Republican lies and propaganda did an excellent job in convincing many ordinary citizens that the A.C.A. was indeed, in Trump’s words, “a disaster.”  They promise to replace it with something better. The wealthy would receive a windfall from fewer taxes with the law’s repeal—Do you think that any plan they would devise would include increasing taxes to pay for it?  Hardly. Their plan, once they have one, would have to be far worse than the present one.

President Obama had good ideas, and nearly always came up with excellent policy proposals. He did in fact accomplish much—it remains to be seen how much of his legacy will be destroyed before the vast majority of Trump supporters realize they’ve been had.  President Obama was, however, terrible regarding “selling” his ideas to the public and explaining the policies he initiated.  He hated back-slapping, deal-making and coercion; the “schmoozing” which is an integral part of politics.  If he couldn’t do it, he should have assured that others did it for him.

This is but one example of President Obama’s placing too much trust in the general decency of human beings.  Relatively speaking, President Obama was and is a noble man: relatively speaking, many of those who opposed him were and are anything but. 

He found out rather late the difference between “is” and “should be” regarding every human being, whose lack of nobility, lack of helpfulness, and lack of goodness is so easily brought about by money and the thirst for power.

Obama was too much like Schiller and too little like Büchner.  If he were more aware of the degree to which greed, hate and delusion drives politics, many more of his “yes we cans” would have been accomplished.  

It is useless to wear ballet shoes when your opponents are wearing combat boots; it is folly to play yes-we-can with marauding hordes of hardliners who continue to attack, wound, and occupy gullible minds with salvo after salvo of noxious memes.

Despite his attempts to remain a gentleman in a snake pit, I still think he was a good president.  A noble man--and yet, as Büchner, and even Schiller would have agreed, nobody’s perfect.

Final Quote: “Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle”  “Everyone for himself, and God against all”

Although it reads like a proverb, this adage was actually written by the German director, Werner Herzog; it was the original title of his 1974 film, “The Enigma of Kasper Hauser.”  It has nothing to do with the belief in an angry God, who punishes humankind for its sins.  A better word for “God” here would be “karma.”

My interpretation of the quote follows.  Hillel’s three questions are pertinent here.  “If I’m not for myself, who will be for me?  If I’m only for myself, what am I?  If not now, when?”  Herzog’s adage indicates what happens to us if we don’t get beyond the first question— a selfish society inevitably deteriorates.  People do indeed get the government they deserve.

Many of us are far too involved with ourselves.  Many of us know more about popular entertainers than we do about the great teachers of mankind, including the founding fathers of the United States. Many of us are too politically unaware.  Many of us are too self-absorbed to fight for what is right.

Every society is responsible for its trumps.  If we ignore the necessity of a non-violent struggle for a more just society, we will all suffer.

I recently wrote a poem about the unspeakable tortures suffered by a great man, Edmund Campion, in the sixteenth century. Campion was falsely accused of treason. The poem ends as follows:

Who would dare repeat such heinous crimes?

Who’d could ever reinstate torture?  Vladimir

Putin?  The President of the United States.

Put down your cellphone.  Nobody’s safe.



Nobody is safe. Democracy and freedom should never be taken for granted!  The four quotes discussed in this essay contain both encouragements and warnings.  They can help us temper excessive optimism by viewing it with the keen eye of realism, and can help us temper excessive realism with indomitable, realistic optimism. If understood, pondered upon, and--most important-- incorporated into our actions, they can indeed help in a time of trouble --that is, now.