Shortly after the “#MeToo” movement began a few years back, a parishioner and thoughtful friend observed that our society was experiencing a collective apocalypse of sorts. She used the word in its original definition meaning “to uncover or reveal.” My friend pointed to the gradual peeling back of the layers of our collective existence that seemed to be coming to the fore with revelations of sexual abuse, police misconduct, and other aberrant behavior. It was shocking to some. Others—like abused women— knew it had been there all along. I was amazed at the number of female friends who confided that “something like that happened to me, too.”
As painful as this new knowledge was, it was better to know than to not know. We hope, as Maya Angelou once said, “When we know better we do better.”
Perhaps it is a positive sign that entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was previously charged with 11 counts of sex crimes, has now been charged with at least one additional offense. Perhaps the time has at last come when a man like Weinstein—who evidently engaged in such offenses routinely and with little chance of being found out—is no longer shielded either by victim intimidation or the reluctance of witnesses to come forward. The layers of concealment are being peeled away.
Former CBS news anchor Connie Chung spoke of the subtle but firm ways professional women were kept in line in the television news business. In an interview on WHYY’s “Fresh Air,” Chung spoke of the on-air rule that the woman in a male-female anchor arrangement was expected to speak on-camera only after her male counterpart. Similarly, any story ideas she might have pitched to her superiors were often rebuffed. These woman might not have been abused sexually, but clearly they were not afforded the same deference as men. The disturbing part is that such practices were accepted as normative.
Many of us were appalled at the shocking incidents of police misconduct that hit the news in the past four years or so. I have personally had conversations with law enforcement professionals I know, and when this topic comes up, there is often—but not always—a certain defensiveness offered by those same professionals. They point to the reality that none of us “know what really happened.” I often suspect that the response is not so much a dispassionate comment as it is the predicable defense by the “thin blue line.”
Yet, I also have been pleased by police officers who declare instead that the profession needs to weed out those who are inclined to bad behavior. Bad cops make all cops look bad, they say.
But things are looking up. Now, even the Illinois sheriff who hired a deputy who shot Sonya Massey in her own home recently has resigned after it was revealed that the deputy had a questionable history of similar incidents in several other agencies. The sheriff had at first insisted that he would stay on the job.
Jack Campbell, the Illinois sheriff whose deputy was charged with murder after fatally shooting a Black woman in her home last month, said Friday that he would leave his position by the end of the month amid calls from the public and the governor that he do so.
The sheriff said in a statement obtained by WAND, a local television news station, that the “current political climate” made it impossible for him to continue in his role leading the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office and that he would retire no later than Aug. 31.
—Orlando Mayorquin, The New York Times, August 9, 2024
We have pulled back the curtain—and maybe—just maybe—it is becoming easier to condemn the evils that have been lurking beneath the surface for so long. The layers are being peeled away, and we are better for it.
We are all familiar with the tradition of “the way things are done.” That perceived wisdom lives in the lore of every profession. Some of us are old enough to have come up in the age of Mad Men when the modernist conventions of gender equality were not known and certainly never practiced. We were happy to live in a world back then when men dominated without question and women were often disrespected. Sadly, nobody was remotely aware of the systemic perversions. I like to think we have learned something in the past 50 years. The blinders seem to have come off, and that has led to the layers of deception being discarded. The standards of decency have changed, and there is wider consensus as to their validity.
It is not as if anybody set out to strip away the deceit; there are aspects to our sordid past that have yet to be exorcised. Coming clean on slavery and the ways in which we seem to acquiesce to the persistence of poverty are two examples. The truth about crime and incarceration as an extension of the welfare state are also a denial of truth—another hidden sickness. The defense of inconvenient truths dies hard.
Enlightenment takes time, but it does prevail. I keep hoping that the sense of progress so prevalent in the 1960s when popular support for the death penalty—was at an all-time low will find its way to the fore again through demographic change. Martin Luther King, Jr, reminded us of the wisdom expressed by the abolitionist minister, Theodore Parker in the 1850s when he observed that “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” We need to be patient as enlightenment dawns like the rising sun.
The history of civilization is both fascinating and hopeful. The 200 or so capital offenses in 17th and 18th century England have been reduced to one in our post-modern time, not counting treason. And lest we congratulate ourselves too quickly, let us recall that the last recorded public lynching was in Alabama in 1981! From my perceptive as a theologian, it seems to me that humanity has become less cruel, but perhaps not as insightful as we might hope. The tone deafness of some politicians—those who refuse to admit the obvious—is astounding. Yet, our progress continues—and noticeably so in the past 10 years. There is no stopping the truth!
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon. and the truth.
—Buddha
And there we have it. Truth has a way of leaking out, even when would rather that it not. The apocalypse is now, and we all better for it!
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