Droppin’ The H Bomb
Radbam October 8th, 2009
It’s one of those perplexing mental exercises in perspective and causation: What came first, chicken or egg? God or the awareness of God? Mounds or Almond Joy? For rabbis this conundrum derives from a sermon’s-eye view of the world. Everything is fodder for interpretation and illustration. And so I wondered whether last week’s debacle over Congressman Alan Grayson’s invocation of the Holocaust and my viewing of the compelling Israeli film Waltz with Bashir was miraculous serendipity or a well-honed preference for pattern recognition, like the putative face on Mars or the Madonna of The Grilled Cheese Sandwich.
Accompanying the hype and hysteria of a Democrat employing the banal, nasty and jingoistic tactics that are the bread and butter of what passes for current Republican statecraft was Grayson’s sloppy reference to the “Holocaust” of the uninsured. Point taken, but point lost as hyperbole raised hackles and diminished the potency of his presentation.
As with the wielding of the argumentative shithammer of Nazi as epithet, illustrating a point with the “H” word, even if the intention was generic and not specific to 1940s Europe, deters substantive discourse, detracts from thought and almost assuredly ends debate. And as always, there is the great risk of trivializing the tragically significant. A Jew (I assume Grayson is knish-carrying tribe member) has a bit more license and leeway to use it, but at equal risk as gentiles for distraction and futility.
A similar concern arises from Waltz with Bashir. Is this incisive and moving examination of the impact of the 1980s Lebanese War (and specifically the Sabra and Shatilla massacres) on Israelis 20 years hence helped by allusions to the Holocaust, or is it a red herring for later-day apologists to cry foul and feel exempt from the soul searching and conscience searing moral dilemma raised by the film?
With most of the uses and abuses of the Holocaust, the starting assumption is that there can be no analogy. This event was sui generis, a moral anomaly designated a “radical evil” by the modern philosopher Martin Buber. Its use in any context is disproportionate. But perhaps there is a legitimate use, a power and a purpose that is justified. Throwing down the “H” gauntlet raises awareness, shatters apathy and, ideally, compels action. Ironically, the very acceptance and integration of the full impact of the Holocaust may, arguably, desensitize us to acts of genocide lesser in scale and scope. What an analogy to Lebanon, or Darfur, or even the needless loss of the uninsured lacks in precision and proportionality it gains in the need to combat global ennui in the face of ongoing suffering.
A tasteless old adage, again permitted only to Jews, chides “There’s no business like Shoah business.” Nothing admonishes, evokes or infuriates like reference to the Holocaust. But in an era concerned that revisionism will obscure reality once witness concedes to age, perhaps more frequent evocations, even at the risk of trivialization and disproportion, will speak to an increasingly negligent world.
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- Comments(3)
Holocaust, n. 1. destruction or slaughter on a mass scale. 2. (”The Holocaust”) mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.
I agree with your larger point. Analogies to the modern touchstones of large-scale moral depravity — Nazis, Hitler, the Holocaust, the Bataan Death March, etc — are becoming common, perhaps common enough to dull our senses to their true horror and encourage apathy.
I wonder, in this case, though. What Grayson said is that it is *a* holocaust. He was not making an analogy, nor referring to the Nazis (or if so, only obliquely). He was using a correct if perhaps hyperbolic word for a banal evil which allows so many people to die in the pursuit of corporate profit. I believe that Grayson was using the correct word, and using it correctly.
However, it was instantly and almost ubiquitously misunderstood to have the meaning you ascribe to it; the connotation has overcome the denotation. The word “holocaust” can now only be used to describe a single event. I believe that this drives towards exactly what you argue we should be resisting. By ascribing the power of that word to a single event, driven by uniquely evil man, we permit ourselves to believe that it was an aberration and cannot happen again. We permit ourselves to be complacent.
We should instead recognize that The Holocaust was an extreme case of something that happens repeatedly throughout history. Through this filter we can evaluate Grayson’s comments more clearly: is the death of 44,700 people a year, through contractual slight of hand, “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale” that deserves moral outrage? This does not demean the horrors of the past; it empowers them.
Thoughtful and compelling points. Thanks.
Don,
Awesome, well-written and thought provoking post. I’d like to respond to two interesting points you
raise.
First with respect to Mr. Grayson, I am not so easily offended by his bombastic rhetoric. Rather I take
issue with his ‘facts’. I have read the study Rep. Grayson references (which can be found at the
Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) website, http://pnhp.org/excessdeaths/). This is not a
prospective study of actual patients. It is a retrospective review of data subjected to statistical
‘analysis’. Among the study’s many weakness, the authors concede that:
“NHANES III [the data source] assessed health insurance at a single point in time and did not validate
self-reported health insurance status”
“We were unable to measure the effect of gaining or losing coverage after the interview”
“Earlier population-based surveys found between 7% and 11% of those initially recorded as uninsured
were misclassified”
“We have no information about duration of insurance coverage from this survey. Further we have no
data regarding cost sharing (out-of-pocket expenses) among the insured”
The authors’ statistical manipulation compares the data to a fantasy world of unlimited health care
resources. Back here on planet earth, we must decide how to best allocate limited resources.
Notably, the authors did not compare to other health care systems, i.e. how many patients die on
waiting lists in Canada and the UK. Nor did they compare to any of the current Democratic proposals.
For example, how many excess deaths will result from the proposed $500 billion cut in Medicare to
pay for a public option?
Oh, by the way, PNHP (http://www.pnhp.org/ ) is an organization whose mission statement is
“Single-Payer National Health Insurance”. Yes, that is the paper’s lead author, the good Dr. David
Himmelstein pictured on the PNHP home page where is described a the organization’s co-founder. I
consider Dr. Himmelstein’s lack of disclosure of his association with PNHP as an ethical breach akin to
promoting a medical device without disclosing a company supported research grant. Forgive me if I am
suspicious that the authors manipulated data to reach a pre-determined conclusion for political
purposes rather than advancing science. As the authors conclude their paper “Despite widespread
acknowlegment that enacting universal coverage would be life saving, doing so remains politically
thorny. Now that health reform is again on the political agenda, health professionals have the
opportunity to advocate universal coverage.”
To quote one my heros, Sen. Daniel Moynihan, “You are entitled to you own opinion, not your own
facts.” It is Rep. Grayson’s use of opinion masquerading as fact to advance his political agenda that I
find objectionable. This paper has already ‘gone viral’ and become the newest healthcare urban
legend, accepted as ‘fact’ when it is no such thing.
Which is a segue to the second issue which raises even more interesting and troubling questions. What
is our ethical obligation in the face an ongoing ‘holocaust’? Do Jews have a special obligation as
victims of the ‘Holocaust’ to prevent similar mass killings? What amazed me about the Holocaust is not
that the Germans could pull it off, rather the world knew what was happening yetdid nothing. Likewise,
we knew about ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and mass killings in Cambodia, yet the world did nothing. It
is my opinion that the phrase ‘Never Again’ has nothing to do with our moral obligation to prevent
another holocaust, rather reflects Europe’s desire never to see another country become strong enough
to dominate the continent.
If we feel outraged at the apparent lives lost published in a statistical analysis, how should we feel
about the senseless deaths of million of real people happening today? Throwing down the ‘H gauntlet’
may raise awareness, if by raising awareness you mean increasing T-shirt and bumper sticker sales.
However if you want to shatter apathy or impel action what is our obligation as Jews?
The UN will never approve of meaningful intervention to stop the Darfur genocide because of the
Chinese and Russian Security Council vetos. As one observer noted, the Chinese get a substantial
amount of their oil from Sudan, so this is truly a case of “No War For Oil” and the Russians would veto
any such resolution on the philosophical belief that it is the right of soverign states to murder their own
citizens.
Should America and it’s Anglosphere allies, G-d forbid, act in a unilateral fashion (i.e without UN
approval as we did in Bosnia) to stop the killing in Darfur? If yes, should we have done the same for
the Iraqi Kurds,etc.? If no, does the Holocaust have any greater meaning?
How does our failure not merely to raise awareness, but to act, even without the UN’s stamp of
approval, reflect on our confidence in the fundamental righteousness of our core cultural and religious
beliefs?
As for me, I have no fact based answers to these questions, only opinions.