The police state, false moralism, and the Holocaust

There is a common political moralism, which is ethically false. It holds that society today (and therefore whatever we might want to call the good, the theoretical object of all ethics) is threatened above all by bad attitudes, prejudices, and hatreds.

If that is true, we need the police. And we need them precisely to oppose all political passions, indeeds all politics, of the kind that desires or wants anything, and thus might want something different than we have. Since they all can lead to bad results. After all, people have been murdered as a result of hatreds and even lack of the compassionate understanding of their neighbors. And that is why we need the warrior-police state, which makes war for social justice. Internationally, as a machine of war against passionate actors who are surely the prey of evil desires and impolite attitudes. Domestically, because of "terrorists." And guess what, they are all "mentally ill," therefore every person with deviate opinions might be a criminal, and therefore must be a potential criminal. Who can be eliminated. Not sacrificed, to be sure, for life is sacred, but they could be taken care of.

But society is not menaced by the hatreds of bad people. It is far more menaced by a government that pretends to be the force opposing such bad people and their nastiness or violence. This police state sustains a prison system that is the world's largest.

These prisons are, to be sure, not as horrible as the Nazi, Soviet, Khmer, or Chinese, camps. But those camps were prisons, and forms and variations of what we have, for dealing with those whose politics place them outside our governmentality. Which opposes sicknesses of the kind that threaten any body politic.

In fact, it is only the terrorrist state that claims to defend ordinary people against "terrorist" individuals. It is a form of pure governance that opposes the political.

People should be kind to their neighbors. (Rarely, some people have saved neighbors. It is possible; courage is by definition rare, but it exists). They should not make them uncomfortable by saying things that are not polite and civil. Yet, they lie who say this is the great problem of our time.

This misconception is at the root of the true Holocaust denial of our time. It says that the Jews of Europe were destroyed by a hatred rooted in anger, and affirming their identity and right to a nation with an army is the answer that will prevent further Holocausts. That thinking is part of the problem. It makes more likely future Holocausts, and it is why there are still concentration camps today.