Do No Harm
“And so, in the name of their Great Leader, the mob, including some rioters carrying Confederate flags, violently assaulted not a fort containing a U.S. Army garrison but the U.S. Capitol itself.” Sean Wilentz, “The Tyranny of the Minority, from Calhoun to Trump”
If I could wave a magic wand the words Do No Harm would be emblazoned in six foot high bronze letters in every corporate boardroom, legislative chamber, classroom, and church in America. Do no harm to people, animals, or the environment; do no harm to communities, towns and cities; do no harm to students, patients, consumers or congregants; do no harm to other nations.
Yes, it’s a fantasy. What is human history — and most of American history — but a long tale of harm? Of course there has been mind-blowing progress in every imaginable field of human endeavor, but progress comes with a cost, and someone, or millions of someones, have to pay the tab. In the open air madhouse that is America, this blood-soaked land, the rich and powerful do harm every day, by their actions and inaction, by their false promises and outright lies, by shifting blame and distracting attention from their misdeeds and endless gaslighting. When I watch and listen to the cretins and blowhards who occupy lofty political positions I often remind myself of the wise words of H.L. Mencken, who said that the only way to look at a politician is down. And I try to remember I.F. Stone’s warning about governments: that they all lie.
It takes wisdom to do no harm. At the collective level I don’t find many examples of wisdom because the wise are not typically invited to speak on TV or pen opinion pieces for the New York Times. We want snark and vitriol, conflict and drama. In short, we demand to be entertained, not educated. Why do you think nitwits like Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are all over the media? They’re the circus, the freak show, the contortionists, the blind knife throwers.
Do you ever stop and think about some of the cruelties Americans have been conditioned to accept as inevitable and immutable? Horrific gun violence, even in our public schools and places of worship; widespread homelessness alongside obscene wealth inequality; an immoral absence of affordable health care; one political party, the GOP, which is more loyal to an incompetent sociopath than to the Constitution (the bedrock of our dying representative democracy); catastrophic climate events marked by fires, floods, and drought; hunger on an embarrassing scale in a country so well off; reverence for the unborn and disregard for the living; the notion that billionaires are Gods; permanent war and budgets for war that dwarf what is spent to help people live less precarious lives. In short, we’ve been conditioned to believe that some of our fellow human beings are disposable because they add no value or are portrayed as leeches. That’s the ethos of unregulated capitalism that has seeped into every corner of American life. Seeped in like a virulent cancer. Every major aspect of life is reduced to a price at which it can be bought or sold. For nearly 50 years the focus of our public policy has been to make life comfortable for the rich and a nightmare for the poor. Job done.
Do no harm would not be an edict or an absolute. The adage would serve instead as a caution, the last item on a checklist to remind those with power over others to consider the consequences of their decisions and actions. A momentary pause for reflection before the die is cast.
Like I said, it’s a fantasy, but imagine if it were true?
A man can still dream.
