216. The Horrors Competition

  

No, I don't mean a competition to see who can do the most horrible things to people.  Nobody tries to be a champion in that league.  I mean a competition to see who can rack up the most horrible things the other fellow has done.  It's the competition that gives us bragging rights in the Human League.  "You're more inhuman than I am."

Of course we mean "your tribe," "your race," "your religion," and, some of us, hope we can take the meaning to "your genes," "your essential nature."

People keep trying to win at this game. In the Balkans five nations are still piling up evidence that worse things were done to them than they ever did.  In Ireland Protestants are still adding up Catholic atrocities and Catholics adding up Protestant atrocities.  There's hardly time to get a count.  Stop to measure a pile in Asia — Muslims against Hindus, Buddhists against Muslims, Sikhs against Hindus — and somebody's sure to come running up with another bundle.  "Hold on!  The latest from Myanmar!  The Buddhists will never match these figures!"

Of course the Buddhists will match them.  Groups embarrassed by current figures just go to the past.  "Yes, we're bad now but seven centuries ago you had a general that makes us all look good.  Look how he slaughtered."

Not that there haven't been undoubted, all-conquering slaughterers.  Admit it, though, and what do you hear?  "Here's one, here's an undeniable case," and up comes another victim dragging his victimizer.  One Holocaust exception opens the gates. 

And not that there haven't been pure non-slaughterers.  Be one of those and you're a sure winner.  I don't think we'll hear from you, though.  You'll be too sweet to play this game. 

With everybody else, though, it's a contest that gets more complicated with every play.  Imagine yourself the scorekeeper.  The Crusades.  "You behead!"  "You crucify."  "Yeah, but you behead more than we crucify."  "We do not."  "Yes you do.  History shows that in 1189 you beheaded this many people." "Whose history?  Yours!"  "Yes but our history is more reliable than yours."  "OK, but even if the numbers are too high we're still ahead.  Crucified people suffer more than beheaded people."

Oi, the scoreboard.  Go from quantity to quality and it's a mess.  Well how about ten points for a crucifixion and three for a beheading, three leaving room for lethal injection, etc., lying ahead.  Sounds good but you just know that as soon as you get it fixed somebody's going to come running in with a disemboweling or a gassing.  And, if you're an old historian, you'll know more: any historian who runs in claiming to have found the last horror is going to be followed by another who has looked at the period more closely.  The closer historians look at any period the more horrors they are going to find.  Sounds to me as if anybody, if they slice it right, can be on top of the leader board.  "You're all more inhuman than I am."

Maybe what we need is a big, loud voice coming in and saying, "You're all inhuman, period.  Yes you too, you weak, you meek, you oppressed.  You just haven't had a chance yet."   The voice of the old-time God would end the game all right.