The Trump administration’s killing spree goes against all recent norms and trends, which have reduced executions to almost none. And the frenetic activity on death row is going on even as the lame duck administration is doing very little else, aside from angrily contesting the election results. It is President-elect Joe Biden who is trying to talk sensibly about the COVID-19 crisis in America, not Donald Trump.
Thinking about a possible explanation, I was reminded of an anecdote told by the late great Belgian sinologist and essayist Simon Leys. He was responding to the British journalist Christopher Hitchens, who had written a scathing book about Mother Theresa, entitled, in a typical Hitchens provocation, The Missionary Position. Leys, a devout Catholic, believed that Hitchens was so overawed by the spiritual superiority of Mother Theresa that he wanted to drag her down to his own base level.
Whether or not Leys was right about Hitchens, the anecdote bears repeating. One day, Leys was working in a noisy café somewhere in Australia. The radio was playing rubbishy pop music. Then, as though by a miracle, the program changed and Leys heard the glorious sound of a Mozart quintet. After a moment of silence in the room, a man abruptly rose to his feet and, as though in a fit of anger, switched the radio back to musical pap. The relief in the café was palpable.
Leys reflected on this peevish gesture. Did the man hate classical music? Did he have a peculiar loathing of Mozart? Or perhaps his lack of cultivation made it impossible for him to appreciate the beauty of this music. Leys concluded that it was none of those things. It was, on the contrary, precisely because the man sensed the quality of the music that he had to cancel it. Mozart had made him feel small, insignificant, uncouth. He had to drag the music down to his own level.
by Ian Buruma, Project Syndicate | Read more:
Image: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty
