Friday
Recently the Washington Post reported that Trump just told his ten thousandth lie, a fact that barely raised eyebrows since we have become inured to his incessant falsehoods. Bertolt Brecht describes the normalization process in “When Evil-Doing Comes Like Falling Rain.”
Imagine that you’re hearing the 10,000th lie for the first time–which is to say, before you’ve become inured:
During an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Mr. Trump suggested that his heartless policy had continued practices in place under the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations, among others. In contrast to his predecessors, Mr. Trump said, “we’ve been on a humane basis . . . we go out and stop the separations,” he said.
Or how about this one from Saturday’s rally in Green Bay:
Trump said he was shocked that Wisconsin’s Democratic governor said he would veto a bill that would punish doctors who don’t try to preserve the life of an infant born alive after an attempted abortion.
“The baby is born,” Trump said. “The mother meets with the doctor. They take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully. And then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.
Or this one from the same rally:
“If you look at what’s happened with the scum that’s leaving the very top of government… these were dirty cops,” Trump said. “These were dirty players… They’re just leaving because they got caught like nobody ever got caught.”
After hearing any of these once, there would be “a cry of horror.” After hearing versions of them 10,000 times, however, they come across as so much falling rain.
Brecht is talking about something far worse than lying—mass butchery—but we have our own version of that as well. Yet another place of worship was attacked by a white Christian terrorist on Saturday as the number of Americans killed by legal semi-automatic weapons continues to rise.
Brecht begins his poem with a series of analogies, each one getting at our desensitization in a different way. This is what it can feel like to protest or complain:
When Evil-Doing Comes Like Falling Rain
Like one who brings an important letter to the counter after
office hours: the counter is already closed.
Like one who seeks to warn the city of an impending flood,
but speaks another language. They do not understand him.
Like a beggar who knocks for the fifth time at a door where
he has four times been given something: the fifth
time he is hungry.
Like one whose blood flows from a wound and who awaits
the doctor: his blood goes on flowing.
So do we come forward and report that evil has been done us.
The first time it was reported that our friends were being
butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred
were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered
and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of
silence spread.
When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!”
When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When
sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer
heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.
In her remarkable article “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” Putin-survivor Masha Gessen tells us to resist “the impulse to normalize” autocratic behavior. It is essential, she says,
to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself.
The miracle of the Parkland survivors is that people actually listened when they called out, “Stop!” to the NRA. Also heartening was how voters in the 2018 election opened their hearts, their doors, and their pocketbooks to Trump resisters, leading to a “blue wave.” Trump’s egregious behavior has not become entirely invisible.
Nevertheless, we are in dangerous territory. A “blanket of silence” remains possible.