Everyone knows the photograph of the Vietnamese monk setting himself on fire to protest the oppression of the American-backed South Vietnamese government. It is one of the most iconographic shots of the twentieth century.
It is also one of the most harrowing images from that century, an era more harrowing than any in human history. Like the famous photo of the young girl who was a victim of a napalm attack, or the film of a curbside point-blank execution of an accused Viet Cong guerilla, or that of the last helicopter leaving the embassy in Saigon, the shot of Thich Quang Duc’s political suicide will forever represent the Vietnam war in the American consciousness.
Of these images, this one is to me the most riveting, and in some ways the most moving. All four pictures invoke themes of violence and desperation, which seem to inexorably draw our attention and, simultaneously, our revulsion. But the image of the burning monk is different from the others in at least two ways. One is the incredible stoicism of this man as he sits, motionless, enduring in complete tranquillity a painful death of his own making.
And that very authorship of the act is the second thing. Alone among these tragic images, this is one in which the victim is also the protagonist, the only person not being acted upon by terrible forces of tectonic proportions, well beyond his or her control.
Which is precisely the reason Thich Quang Duc’s act is so astonishing. He, by his own choice, is making the ultimate sacrifice in order to better, if not save, the lives of others. And he is doing even more than that really, since he has not ingested a bottle of sleeping pills and crawled off into a quiet corner to die quietly. Because that act would produce no impact at all, he has opted to die painfully, purely for the purpose of moving us to think about something we have been comfortably avoiding.
Forty years later, we can argue all day long whether this represents an act of courage or not, the work of a sane man or a lunatic. I certainly think it is among the bravest and shudderingly sane steps anyone might take, and I suspect that many of those who would condemn it in one fashion or another would nevertheless, simultaneously, have nothing but praise for the American soldier who volunteers for a suicide mission, or the Marine who jumps on a live grenade in his foxhole, sacrificing his life to save his buddies.
How many among us have the courage of our convictions to make such sacrifices? How many of us could sit motionless through the searing, terrible violence of self-immolation, imposed upon ourself, by ourself, in order to advance the cause of social justice and save the lives of others?
If those questions make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, then consider also this one: What if you did have that courage, that conviction, that boundless generosity to commit such an act, but then nobody noticed? What if you painfully sacrificed quite literally everything you had to give for the benefit of others, but it was all for naught?
It is surely a commentary on the times in which we live that precisely that has just happened, right here in the most intensive media capital on Earth.
On November 3rd, Malachi Ritscher departed this world, just as Thich Quang Duc had done before him, setting himself aflame alongside a Chicago freeway off-ramp right during rush-hour.
Why? In his own words: “Here is the statement I want to make: If I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country. If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country.”
Surprised? If this is the first you’ve heard of this act, you’re hardly alone. In what sense could this not possibly be a major historic milestone in the Iraq war, deserving of significant media coverage? And yet, Malachi Ritscher’s sacrifice has received about as much coverage as... as... ...well, as, say, the Downing Street Memos, which proved the great crimes of this war, and were also buried by the media. No worries, though, for those of us consumed by the truly important stuff. Wall-to-wall coverage of Brad and Jen and OJ and Paris continues unabated, as ubiquitous as Pink Floyd songs on a classic rock station.
And, of course, you don’t need to have seen “The China Syndrome” to know that questions of Mr. Ritscher’s mental health – real or imagined, authentic or planted – would play heavily in what little coverage there actually was of his suicide. I mean, after all, who but the truly insane could take their own life in this fashion, right? (Um, before you answer that, we need you to temporarily forget that inconvenient story of the brave Marine we’ve all been taught to admire – you know, the one with the grenade in his foxhole.)
Truly chilling isn’t it? A man sacrifices his life in a gruesome suicide in order to try saving the lives of others, and there is hardly any media coverage of the event. And when there is, reference is immediately made to his ‘questionable’ sanity.
One of the smartest men to live in the White House once said “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”. Would that his current successor, probably the least intelligent and certainly the least successful of American presidents, understood JFK’s words. For if we as a society have come to the point where peaceful change is not possible – indeed, where the supreme sacrifice of a political suicide goes almost completely unnoticed – what can be next when the public’s patience is exhausted? If you can’t get heard by burning yourself to death, what’s left?
We’ve had an election – as clear a mandate against this war as ever there was a mandate for or against anything – and that was followed by a more subtle but equally powerful exercise in sobriety, taking the form of James Baker’s (i.e., George H.W. Bush’s) immanent critique of the war. And yet the president – this master of obstinacy, this petulant pretender, this most oblivious of immature boys desperately masquerading as a grown-up – tacks in precisely the opposite direction. Following Kennedy’s formulation, then, only one last chance remains for democratic processes to avoid violent domestic catastrophe, assuming the public ever grows sufficiently weary of the lies and the murders: impeachment and removal from office. But would he go, even then? If there is one thing that was made clear throughout the hounding Clinton years, the elections of 2000, 2002 and 2004, the constitutional shreddings by Cheney and the hijackings by DeLay, it is that the radical right now controlling the GOP believes in its inherent right to rule – the public, the Founders and the world be damned.
And so Malachi Ritscher is dead, another victim of the madness of King George, and of a society so sick at heart that it no longer even notices its political suicides. Here’s another reminder of our current sad state from John Kennedy (who, unfortunately, was much more accomplished at speaking eloquently than he was at governing righteously): “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
Only too right, Jack, only too right. But, alas, not only does that absence of fear not describe contemporary Americans, it is especially inapplicable to the supposed first amongst us, our (also supposed) leader who seems more frightened of “unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values” than he is even of people someday finding out the truth about the failure who cowers deep inside this blustering child of privilege. (But guess what, George?)
In order to hide from unpleasant facts about both himself and his policies, Bush has constructed an elaborate structure of heavily-reinforced, eight-foot thick, solid-lead walls between himself and the real world, with phalanxes of goons stationed around those ramparts, and coopted media flacks orbiting the troops. He surrounds himself with sycophants and manipulators who know how to make him feel good. He attends campaign rallies where only hand-picked supporters are allowed (what ever happened to the idea of campaigning to win votes?), and where you can get arrested for trespassing if your t-shirt or bumper-sticker is deemed remotely critical of the president. By his own admission, he doesn’t read newspapers. And he doesn’t even have the decency to go to funerals for the soldiers he’s murdered for a lie in Iraq.
If you find yourself wondering, “How does this guy ever hear the truth about what’s going on?”, then you’ve understood precisely the point. And you understand, as well, why a straight-faced Bush could tell People magazine last week, “I must tell you, I'm sleeping a lot better than people would assume”. If he had instead exclaimed, “What, me worry?”, the tragedy of this presidency could not have been made more plain. Heck, he even looks the part.
And so here we are left, ultimately, with our two Americans and a war. Both fatally asleep. Both destroyed in Iraq. Neither ever to be saved from their irrevocable fate.
But there, of course, the similarities violently depart from one another. One man started the war, the other tried to end it. One man could easily turn it off, while the other gave everything toward that very end and accomplished almost nothing. One man screams out to us, the other is deaf to our cries. One man with the courage of a dozen Mandelas, the other desperately afraid of fear itself. One we marginalize almost completely, questioning his sanity, the other we twice choose to represent a nation of 300 million people, the world’s only superpower.
So it goes in 21st century America, which every day looks more and more like 19th century Belgium, complete with cruel torture and mass murder in the dark colonies, all for the sake of spreading the gospel, of course.
In no sense is our holiday shopping disturbed, as we mark the birthday of the one we call the Prince of Peace with the consumption of ever more stuff and the abiding joys of unabated commerce.
What’s happened to us? What’s become of Lincoln’s last best hope of earth? I fear that that which he nobly saved we are now busy meanly losing.
When he invoked those historic phrases, Lincoln spoke of Congress and his administration, and of another generation and another war. But the words mean as much now as they did then. For our politicians are nothing if not unremittingly fearful of our wrath, and we therefore bear the inescapable burden of history to do what is right. Substitute “peace” for “the Union”, and his words apply equally to us today:
“Fellow‑citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We – even we here – hold the power, and bear the responsibility. ... We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. ... The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just – a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”
And we, today, say we are for peace. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to make peace. The world knows we know how to make peace. We hold the power and bear the responsibility.
Malachi Ritscher understood this. It would require so much less than a sacrifice like his from the rest of America to end this horrible tragedy.
Merry Christmas. War is over, if we want it.
