The Second Sin

There’s a line by bell hooks that I read many years ago and have never forgotten: “Women and children all over the world want men to die so that they can live.” This year, I’ve found myself repurposing it: Men, women, and children all over the world want America to die so that they can live. I remind myself of this when I start to feel panic about living in a dying empire and it reorients me. It puts me back on my feet. There are consequences for what we do, what we allow done in our name. People all over the world want America to die so that they can live. Those people are in America, too.

A week ago, in her nomination acceptance speech, Kamala Harris told a slew of predictable, self-aggrandizing, absurdist lies¹ —including that she and Biden are “working around the clock” to end the genocide in Gaza—but she also told the truth: about her commitment to Israel, her obsession with a “secure” border, her allegiance to “law enforcement” and passion for maintaining the “most lethal fighting force in the world.” “In the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs,” she said, declining to specify, thinking the answer was self-evident, as it is.

I avoid any direct electoral opining—participating in it, of course, but also consuming it, at which I’m less successful because it’s omnipresent. There’s not been an election in my adult life during which arguments about who to vote for and why have not been concentrated on everyone left of center and leveled in the ugliest, most patronizing of bad faiths. I have no patience for the familiar non-conversation, the “discourse” that consists of hurling oneself into a brick wall. To paraphrase a teacher I once had, “don’t buy a ticket for the ride that makes you sick.”

Since Biden pulled out,² I’ve seen some attempts at tugging on the balloon strings of the liberals (and leftists?) who are championing Harris with their full throats. Mainly these come in the form of multi-slide posts on Instagram: reminders of what Harris actually has or hasn’t promised, how she has conducted herself throughout her political career, what role the electorate plays or should play during a candidate’s campaign, what our goals should be if we have a vision greater than her own. Almost inevitably, these messages nosedive into a final disclaimer that Trump is the most terrifying politician in history, so obviously Harris is better and obviously there is no choice but to vote for her. These missives are as passionately felt as they are unserious. Are they meant to assuage empire or challenge it? Why rouse people only to sing them back to sleep?

Forget Harris for a moment.³ This year, the Democrats removed the opposition to the death penalty from their platform despite the clear popularity of such a stance within their own party. They invited multiple cops onstage to address all in attendance, yet the convention hosted no Palestinian-American speakers; the “uncommitted” delegates were shut out. On the streets of Chicago, Democrats plugged their ears and rolled their eyes as they walked by pro-Palestinian protestors. They laughed at and mocked the names of the dead children. I know many Americans cling to their hope of a lesser evil. They have not been able to convince me that it is anything more than a dream or, much worse, a mirage. What harm will these people reduce? For whom will they reduce it? How many more years of bolstering right-aligned politicians must we undertake before one of them is actually “pushed left”?

It was exciting to me, thrilling even, when Biden retracted his bid for a second term. But that giddiness died very quickly. Three days after Biden dropped out, the genocidaire Netanyahu addressed the Congress that has given him billions of dollars worth of American-made bombs to eradicate hundreds of thousands of human beings, tens of thousands of children.⁴ “Our enemies are your enemies, our fight is your fight,” Netanyahu said, speaking, like Harris, the obvious truth from within a sea of obvious lies.⁵ This massacre belongs as much to the United States as it does to Israel, probably more, and the 58 standing ovations that the public face of this ongoing slaughter received should be recognized as self-congratulation more than outwardly directed praise.

Harris was not in attendance then but she did meet with Netanyahu privately. The following day, she released this statement:

“The words of corrupt diplomacy appear to me more and more in their true light…as words spoken in enmity against reality,” wrote Daniel Berrigan in 1968.⁶ “And that of course is a very old and carefully specified sin.” I’ve come to think of this phenomenon as the second sin, the evil that supersedes all others because it encompasses and elevates the rest, because it’s not possible without them. It is the most advanced evil. What could be worse than massacring tens of thousands of children? Calling their massacre unavoidable, correct, desirable, righteous, not merely defensible but unassailably good. Giving their massacre a standing ovation. Pinning a medal to a pile of corpses and handing another gun to the person who pulled the trigger.

It feels to me as if most of the exhortations around voting for Harris come from people who would like to pretend the second sin is not a problem, who perhaps don’t recognize the second sin at all. “Foreign” policy has no bearing on “domestic.” Certain lies must be swallowed and stomached for the greater good. We must rally around someone who smiles at and shakes the hand of a man who would kill a million people, if he could, and do it with her full participation and facilitation. We must ignore everything in recent history that illustrates how Democrats govern, what a Democratic presidency entails.

Harris’s statement made me cry because the reality it confirmed makes me cry, makes me choke. There are so many layers of malevolence and dishonesty within it. It is insidious, uncompromisingly vile, malignant. Nothing in it indicates an amenability to life, dignity, decency. “The most lethal fighting force in the world” she shouted from her stage. A force for fighting what? More babies. More pregnant women. More little boys with birds, girls hugging their cats, elders in tents, fathers with no children left, teenagers with no legs, orphaned newborns, the water, the trees, the air, the dust, the protestors with their hands up, the college kids in tents.

When it comes to voting, I’m not trying to talk anyone into anything nor out of it. I would only issue the invitation to “act as if the truth were true”⁷ because the act becomes a little easier when there are more people doing it. And because I don’t know what is left to us if we can’t claim that much, or what power we might hope to yield if we cede this most modest, fundamental one. We have to debride reality, to carve away the necrotic tissue that encroaches on and obscures the truth. It’s not optional. It’s urgent. It’s necessary. It’s the starting point from which everything else becomes possible.

Americans live in a country where murderers are catered to, embraced, celebrated, inundated with money and weapons, and where the new Democratic candidate is frothing at the bit, so to speak, were such a bit to even exist, to smear decent people as dangerous, hate-filled maniacs for daring to object. A genocidaire was cheered for bragging about his genocide, and in response she made a statement about a piece of cloth. A piece of cloth is what moves her. Months ago I saw a picture of a bombed out building with a dead child dangling out like a rag, like torn fabric, barely a body anymore. But it was a child and not a flag. Her death did not warrant a statement.

1  Here are some examples, though if you read or watch the speech I’m sure you will spot others. (How she describes her motivations and thought process as a prosecutor, for one.)

2  I had to look up how long ago that was: five and half weeks. These days time feels less like linear progress and more like a cyclone.

3  Forgive me, for this has surely been remarked upon extensively, but I only recently discovered some uncanny echoes coming to us from history’s corridor. The last time the DNC was held in Chicago was 1968, the same year in which a sitting president—Lyndon Johnson—dropped out of the race; the Vietnam War had made him too unpopular to win. He was replaced by his Vice President, the pro-war Hubert Humphrey, who announced his candidacy with the words ”here we are, just as we ought to be…the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, politics of purpose, politics of joy.” Edmund Muskie, who was anti-war, came on as his running mate. In that sense, it was actually a more radical pairing than what we’re being offered today. And yet, they lost.

4  There is not, to my knowledge, an official death count that comes anywhere near the likely number. To keep citing the 30,000-odd count from last year is a joke. If there were a ceasefire today, the lack of basic resources, hygiene, and infrastructure means there would still be an avalanche of deaths ahead. Here are some links to read more if you’d like: The Lancet, US Doctors in Gaza, Oxfam, Reuters.

5  For instance, “Israel got the civilians out of harm’s way.”

6  He returned to this idea regularly, writing in 1996 “There is a perversion worse than evil deeds… It is to misname evil as goodness, to exalt it, parade it, honor it.”

7  Berrigan again naturally.