There are no ideal humans

[DirkGently]

HEyHEY's post (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8830411&mesg_id=8830411)

about the recent book suggesting that Teddy Roosevelt, along with his admirable qualities, had some wretchedly racist ideas as well got me thinking about the idea of group loyalty, and this tendency we have to stretch the truth to protect the idea that someone we admire is always right, or always deserving of support. Why?

I started to say the following, and it got too wordy, so here it is:


Teddy was also a great naturalist and protector of wilderness, which he loved to express by killing and stuffing every animal he could find. Again, a fairly typical point of view at the time that's disturbing to most people today. We wouldn't have our National Parks without him though.

It's a good point of discussion because it undercuts our tendency to idealize an individual person, instead giving credit where it's due to good ideas or admirable acts, and leaving the notion of perfect beings to religion.

That mode plays in our politics too, I think. We'd like our leaders to be all good or all bad, so that all we have to do is pick one to support or despise, and our job is done. But that's just intellectual laziness, isn't it? People should have opposed TR in his short-sighted views and his moral failures, regardless of whether they found themselves on the same side of a political fence as he. Some likely did, but we don't hear as much about them, because Teddy Roosevelt was an exalted person, and the comparably smaller voices of criticism, however correct, were too small a detail for history to track. History is lazy, too.

Another reason I think we'd like to judge a person once and exalt (or denigrate) them utterly rather than constantly evaluating their specific actions and responding accordingly is that our own egos would like to think that we can establish ourselves as "good" and that the words or deeds we put out there that don't quite meet that standard somehow become ancillary. Who wants to think that we might be intelligent and ethical and mindful, and yet, either by failing to see beyond the shortcomings of our culture as Roosevelt apparently did, or through a momentarily lapse of judgment or some other weakness, might embrace a horrible idea like racism? Cause a serious car accident? Scar a child through uninformed parenting?

It's disturbing because it's just easier to assume we are good, and not do the work of trying to keep doing good. It's a lot of work figuring out what's right, trying to be smart; trying to be fair. When it comes to ourselves, we assume we deserve the benefit of the doubt. We're sure that no matter how much we screw up, we deserve "good" label for life.

That's baloney, of course. No one's "good" for life, or right all the time, or holds all the right views, or take all the right actions. We can try for good, but end up accomplishing evil, and when we do, we deserve to be smacked down for it. We're not entitled to the world's unflagging support because we're trying, or think we're trying, to do right. But maybe we'd like to think we are.

So with our heroes and leaders. We'd like to pick one, decide that they reflect our view of what's right, and that they're both competent and ethical, and be done with it. But that's the lazy again. It's not simple. Leaders don't do the right thing by default every time any more than the rest of us. We can give the benefit of the doubt up to a point, but whether they are Teddy Roosevelt or Ed the dog catcher, when they fail or do wrong, we can't afford to pretend otherwise just to keep the easy, simple narrative of the ideal human going. That's bad faith, because it's a false argument that we know is false, when we think about it.

Thus these ongoing battles to characterize and re-characterize historical figures like Lincoln or the Founding Fathers and our confused and sometimes angry reactions when we're forced to recognize that while there are many worthwhile human ideals, there are no ideal humans. If we follow the easy narrative, then we have to re-label our heroes when it becomes uncomfortably certain that they screwed up. We like to sort of talk past things and avoid inconvenient complications like a racist, white supremacist Teddy Roosevelt, but in the long run it does no one any good to lie about these things. If true, whatever his reasons, Teddy was utterly, massively wrong, both intellectually and morally, on an extremely important issue.

So what to do with this information? If we want to preserve the narrative of the ideal human, we have to throw Teddy on the trash heap. Racists need not apply to anyone's pantheon of heroes. One way to resist would be to call this book and any other sources making the same claim a lie. But it doesn't sound like a lie, does it? Sounds like Teddy had a big, gruesome blindspot when it came to race. Not uncommon in his day, but still a great failing on his part.

Surely we can hold a more nuanced view of T.R. than choosing between labeling him an evil racist and disregarding his good leadership, or disregarding his racism in order to preserve the idea that good leaders never have terrible ideas.

If we are going for the less lazy, more nuanced view, the first thing that we have to do is abandon this simplistic, bad faith, nonsensical notion of seamless, unflinching loyalty to a leader. It's just not one of our best ideas. For one, blind loyalty puts the followers in an immediate position of arguing in bad faith, because that kind of loyalty again relies on the false narrative of the ideal human. Those arguing for perfect loyalty must try to pretend that a particular person or group is somehow inherently correct, which is neverthe case. That's not to say we cannot support a leader or belong to a group. But we can't be lazy about it. Each action and each idea has to stand or fall on its own merits. We help no one by denying that Teddy Roosevelt did (if true) these despicable things based on these horrible ideas, even while he did stupendous things based on wonderful ideas.

Some argue that unity is more important than the truth. That we should support T.R. for the good he did and the wisdom he showed, and not talk about the rest. Why? Saying that others lie in the same way is not an excuse if you're trying to do good.

Likewise, just because people aren't comfortable with the thought of supporting non-ideal humans who do some things right and some wrong, do we bend the truth and pretend T.R. wasn't (if true) a white supremacist, or do we get over our laziness, get off our intellectual rear ends, and tell the T.R.'s of the world that we will support them to the precise extent that their actions deserve it, and oppose them just as strongly when they do not?

Unsurprisingly, Teddy himself gave a great quote on the subject, which I've seen raised here often:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

"Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149
May 7, 1918Text

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I think he was right.