CHAPTER 13

MARTY II

Marty missed the entire confrontation between protestors and National Guardsmen.  He was busily grading papers in his office.  He wasn’t an activist protestor, so he probably wouldn’t have been there even if he had no other obligations.  When he got a message from Scot requesting a meeting as soon as possible, he was eager to get an eyewitness account.  He made time for the meeting that evening, which was Thursday, May 7th.
When Marty entered the Student Union, Scot was there already sipping on a cup of coffee and snacking on an order of French fries.  Scot had a very worried look on his face.
“You look haggard,” Marty said to Scot.
“I haven’t been able to sleep for 30 hours now,” Scot responded.  “I can’t understand how people can gun down other people as if they were clay targets at a shooting range.  The wanton annihilation of life seems so alien to me.  Am I the exception?  Now the My Lai Massacre no longer seems like an aberration.  It probably would have gone unreported if a special helicopter pilot had not intervened.  How many similar massacres have gone unreported?  Only one soldier, a black private, didn’t participate, didn’t succumb to the group pressure to gun down unarmed civilians including children and babies.  Even then, he appears to have shot himself in the foot to make it look as if he couldn’t participate.”
“Hermann Goering, Hitler’s top lieutenant, argued that there is a Nazi in all of us,”  Marty responded.  “That inner Nazi can be activated in any nation,” Goering claimed.  “It seems that in some people, the Nazi is closer to the surface.  In others, it is buried very deep below the surface, but still can be activated under the right conditions.  It's easy to turn someone into an evil monster.  It's nearly impossible to turn someone into a good person."
“Are they able to tell at what level a person’s Nazi lurks?” Scot asked, curious about where his was and afraid it might be closer to the surface than he would like.
“As far as I know, they can’t locate it precisely,” Marty responded.  “However, there are several factors acting on it.  The primary one is fear.  Goering said all you need to do to get them into a state of panic is tell the people they are about to be attacked, and that there are subversives in their midst.  The people will gather into a frightened herd and seek someone they believe will save them, and do ANYTHING that person tells them to do.  That seems to be the ideal formula for awakening and releasing our inner Nazis.”
“Let me go get some dessert,” Marty said, rising from his seat and strolling toward the snack bar.  “Want anything?” he asked looking back over his left shoulder.
“No, thanks,” Scot replied as he watched Marty walk toward the snack shop counter and approach the attractive brunette working there.  Scot knew her.  In fact, he knew her intimately.  She decided one day that she no longer wanted to be a virgin.  She suspected virginity revealed itself somehow.  Most guys, especially the best looking ones, could detect virginity and avoided her.  She set out to remedy the condition.  Scot was there that night, having a cup of coffee.  She picked him based on that criteria.  Scot had been flattered.  He wasn’t aware of her motives at that time.  He had just terminated one relationship and was ready for another one.  It was far less time consuming to have a steady girl friend than spending nights and money in bars trying to find one.  He was devastated when she was so affectionate for one romantic night, then wanted nothing more to do with him.  His ego was shattered.  She, on the other hand, suddenly was very popular.  Scot began seeing her everywhere on the arms of or in the cars of the most popular guys on campus, even a couple star athletes.
Marty returned with a cup of coffee and a low-fat muffin.  He added enough sugar to his coffee to more than compensate for the reduced sugar in his muffin.
“Irrational, disproportionate reaction is typical for this state of mind,” Marty added picking up the conversation where he had interrupted it.  “Fear causes the brain to produce cortisol which blocks information from going to the cognitive, rational parts of the brain.  Joseph Stalin recognized this irrationality.  He said: Kill a man, it’s murder.  Kill a million, it’s a mere statistic.  Every successful dictator, I suspect, understands this human reaction and behavior.”
“Jacques Rostand said it best,” Marty continued.  “He said: 'Kill a man, you’re a murderer.  Kill a million, you’re a conquerer.  Kill them all, you’re a god.'”
“Do the rational minds ever outnumber the irrational ones?”  Scot wanted to know.
“Not that I know of,” said Marty, matter-of-factly.  “There still are a lot of studies to be done on our subconscious minds.   Calvinists believe we are born evil and must correct that by certain acts, beliefs, rituals and harsh discipline.  An evil person could arise and dupe enough people into doing evil acts.  That was the main source of problems in the world, they believed.  Now many, if not most, believe there is evil in almost all of us.  Only a tiny minority have the ability to suppress it, or stand up to peer pressure.
"Anthropologically, we still have our reptile brain.  It's our default brain, in my opinion.  It's called the amygdala, from the Greek word for almond, because that is it's size.  It contains all the knowledge needed to survive and reproduce, but it would function at the level of a carnivorous animal.  To see how we would behave without any outside influences, we can look at a group of chimpanzees, wolves or lions.  However, with our full brains in operation we have the potential to be much better than those animals, or much worse.  It seems to be easier to take the evil course.  I believe natural laws dictate that the strongest, most adaptable, must survive.   That struggle requires the strong to be willing to take part in the elimination of the weak.
“The problem is that when there is a premature democracy as some claim exists in the U.S. and Great Britain, most people will vote for the person who looks and acts like a warrior, an authoritarian, a take-charge person, the man on a white horse, the man wearing the white hat.  Thus they vote against democracy.  The trappings of democracy are there, but the voters vote for the most authoritarian candidate and expect the leader to act that way.
“We tried to distance ourselves from the Nazis, claiming what they did was horrible even though we already had done most of what Hitler did and continue to commit some of the most reprehensible acts,”  Marty said.  “We accused them of racism against Jews while we practiced blatant racism against Black people, Asians, Native Americans and Jews.  We believed that the louder we accused the Germans of racism, the less guilty we could claim to be.  We had the ‘At least we are not as bad as . . .’ crutch.  Psychologists call it: ‘moral equivalency.’
“In addition, The Cold War forced us to give up some of our most cherished prejudices so we could claim we were better than the Communists.  The Equal Rights Act of 1965 was one example.  That removed some of our Nazi trappings.  Large segments of American society opposed the bill anyway.  The “Sixties” enlightenment was not really a leap into civilization.  It was a withdrawal from Nazism with many fingernails clawing into the ground and resisting the change.
“More and more people are uncomfortable with the old lies.  More and more victims such as Black people and women, and even Jews, have no interest in preserving and perpetuating the lies that only oppress them and give white males an affirmative action monopoly.  They are ready to jettison most, if not all, traditions.  Then traditions can be reinstated only if they pass the new non-racist, non-sexist merit tests.”
“Why did the guardsmen fear the protestors enough to consider them to be enemies or just a threat for that matter?”  Scot asked.  “At My Lai, the people were foreign with foreign customs and could be portrayed as a threat to us.  How do people of your own nation get portrayed as a lethal threat to their own fellow citizens?”
“The commanders play a large role in convincing subordinates that the situation is worse than it is,” Marty said.  “There would have been briefings.  They would have exaggerated the dangers.  Don’t forget, we naturally want to dispose of anyone who threatens the order and security of OUR herd.  Something as insignificant as the Beatles with their hair slightly longer than normal was taken as a challenge and a step toward the breakdown of society and order.
“Trivial heresies have ended in monumental wars.  This is particularly true among religious groups.  Jane Goodall noticed this same instinct among animals and called it ‘pseudo-speciation.’  A member of a species can be convinced that another member of the species is not a member, but an alien threat.  They’re inside the walls of the fortress and disguised where they can do the most damage.
“When the ROTC building burned down Saturday night, that was enough threat to spark the unite-and-defend-the-herd instincts.  The young boys from the farms and rural areas that constitute a large fraction of guardsmen already feel threatened by the urban environment and alien, anarchic behavior of protestors.  Their threat templates have alarms blaring.  They believe taking action, any kind of action, will remove or lessen the danger they feel is threatening them.
“Those innate feelings were reinforced by politicians, commanders, university executives and the media convincing them that their instincts and gut feelings must be true.  It’s like strange sounds around your house in the middle of the night.  Your instinct is to defend yourself, your family and possessions.  You go into the highest state of alert, prepared for the worst kind of threat.  All too often, people overreact with disastrous outcomes.
“That’s why several protest leaders are claiming that agents provocateur had to have ignited the fire at the ROTC building.  A lot of politicians wanted the results that occurred.  They can seem decisive, and ready to take action which is the best defense against a threat in their minds.
“There’s a professor at the University of Chicago named Leo Strauss who believes there is no morality.  People do the right thing only when forced to.  Even the ‘right thing‘ is nebulous to him.  Therefore, there must be a father figure even for adults.  This father figure is unaccountable to anyone.  His authority, usually dispensed harshly, serves himself first but keeps society together and the people from harming themselves or each other.  His father figure is totalitarian, but he understands the minds of ordinary people.  In the long run, he believes, what the dictator does is best for the common good because it maximizes security and order and the preservation of the tribe.”
Scot had concluded that the world could be better, but only if there were millions of Martys.  Marty seemed infinitely wise.  It was Marty who was Scot’s salvation.  Marty was the youngest professor Scot ever had.  Scot, having spent four years in the military and wasted a couple more looking for local jobs, was one of the oldest students Marty had.  The two misfits found comfort in each other's company.  Scot badly needed guidance.  Marty was highly disciplined accounting for his Doctor of Philosophy degree at a very young age.  Scot was the epitome of a lack of discipline .
"What are your long-range goals?"  Marty had asked Scot.
"Get a house that has two bathrooms," Scot said after a few seconds of deliberation.
"No.  Seriously?"  Marty said.
"I am serious," Scot asserted.  "It doesn't matter if I'm single, married or have one or two children, I want a house with at least two bathrooms.  I need more skills to achieve that goal.  That's why I decided I need to go to college.  No one else in my family ever has gone to college.  Of my three dozen cousins, none has even one college credit hour.  Where I was raised, we have difficulty on tests with the English Language.  At the suggestion of a friend, I prepared a resume.  It cost me jobs."
“English is a very difficult language,” Marty stated, trying to ameliorate Scot’s embarrassment.  “Take the months of the year, for example.  They derive from Norse Gods, Roman Caesars and Latin numbers.  On something as critical as a resume, for instance, you must always check out every noun, verb and adjective.  Some words can be positive for one profession and negative for another.  Every resume must be tailored to each job down to the fine details.”
Scot’s greatest fear from the experience was that Marty would judge him to be very ignorant, a stupid Hillbilly.  Marty never indicated that he did, if that was his conclusion.  He continued his friendship with Scot, and showed no greater sign of condescension toward him.  In fact he seemed very encouraging as if he believed Scot had a lot of potential.  Scot knew he could learn much from Marty, especially on those occasions when he got far off course.  He did not want to lose that source of information, or friendship.  It was a friendship that Scot treasured.