At my first ever, week-long summer church camp (I was 11 and a practicing Lutheran), I and the token skater/heavy metal kid of the lot—who used a ballpoint pen to tattoo the letters O-Z-Z-Y on his knuckles once a day—were tasked with being in charge of setting up viewing of the afternoon’s film, a sort of highlight of our five-day retreat. All it involved was wheeling a TV out, popping a VHS cassette into a VCR, fast forwarding it to the right spot, making sure the tint and the V-hold were set and then telling the counselor we were done. This was skater/metal kid’s second year at camp, so he was already aware of movie time. Instead of popping in the VHS tape about premarital sex and not trusting the Arab phenotype or whatever, in anticipation, he’d brought a pornographic film with him to camp, for everyone to enjoy in its place.
When Pastor Feustel pressed Play on that sucker, everyone sitting around that 30-inch screen got to see (probably for the first time in their young lives) the sweaty, feverish, ball-slappin’, spit-roastin’ goodness that awaited them in adulthood. In the aftermath of interrogation, I feigned absolute ignorance, and skater/metal kid laughed so hard behind his hands he began to cry, and somehow got Pastor Feustel to believe they were tears of shame and innocence lost, that we’d only inserted the correct tape from out of the box and hadn’t bothered to fast forward beyond the exact point where ManDingo and Michael J. Cox had been mid-roast on Leena Labianca*.
Now, I wouldn’t call Pastor Feustel a dummy. But he obviously didn’t get 13-year-old skater/metal kid’s history, or the context that was him being in charge of setting up video time. More likely—the pastor assumed context, which was: church camp. Everyone, therefore, should be well-behaved, God-fearing and Jesus-loving. Forget that they’re human beings. Because: church camp.
The failure to understand the history or context of a situation or situation-to-be is a trap many leaders, officials, authorities, judges, voters or the easily outraged often, surprisingly, fall into.
Take a court of law, for example. The same situation can occur. I mean, except for the porno. Unless it’s being used as evidence.
First-time offenders often get no more than a slap on the wrist—depending on the crime and their wealth and/or fame—simply because they don’t have a rap sheet. Which means, since the judge has never seen them get up to anything in their personal lives for which they didn’t get the police called on them, their daily habits will never place them before a judge again, and they’re more or less good, honest people. Often, the police showing up at your door is your having reached a bar that was set really, really high. Meaning: you’ve gotten up to plenty of amoral acts that flew right under a legal radar, though the people you’ve offended and abused may tend to argue otherwise.
Now, while the law is technically black and white, interpretation and judgment calls are an integral part of the justice system, and arguably come into play more than the ruling of guilt (or innocence) beyond a reasonable doubt. Jeffrey Dahmer got one of his drugged-up victims returned to him by the police, simply because they didn’t know Dahmer’s history or surmise the context of the situation (though context could have been easily surmised and a better judgmental call made had the officers maybe not been bigots or homophobes).
And playing out in the news right now: After an appeals court temporarily lifted the gag order placed on Donald Trump (because his personality is that malignant and his words that dangerous), a rise in threats levied against the trial judge—and, particularly, the judge’s clerk, who’s gotten some 20 to 30 nasty calls and 30 to 50 harassing messages a day ever since—has been reported. The gag order was placed because the judge knew Trump’s history and understood the context (and consequences) of the former president saying rude things about someone to his millions of followers on social media. It was paused because others refused to.
I could give a hundred more examples, but I’ll move on to what happened in Israel on October 7th, 2023, to make a greater point about the understanding of history and (you guessed it) context.
The acts of savagery by the particular Hamas militants who perpetrated them is unrepeatable, in good company and in good conscience. Whatever punishment comes to those individuals will no doubt not be deemed excessive by a vast majority.
But violation of civil life by military force and rule, directly (targeted oppression) or indirectly (civil war), breeds an inviolable, amoral, lawless type. History has shown that repeatedly in places like Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iran, El Salvador, Sudan and elsewhere. And such violation repeatedly preceded the acts of October 7th.
The question to ask by the rest of the outraged world isn’t, ‘What kind of animal would do such a thing?’ or ‘How could someone engage in such acts?’ If you don’t take events to occur in vacuums, and you know history and context, the answers should be well enough understood. The question, really, is: ‘What really prompted it?’
Did rats get into your kitchen? What really prompted it?
Are raccoons killing your chickens? What really prompted it?
Did your spouse cheat on you? What really prompted it?
Did a porno wind up in the VCR? What may have caused it?
Sometimes the answers are simple, sometimes they’re complex and difficult to swallow. But there are almost always answers beyond “because [insert sole and unlikely / unfounded / unproven reason here]”.
As evidence, I submit this from truthout.org about what happened to the peasant population in Cambodia, and how it contributed to the growth and atrocities of the Khmer Rouge:
The Americans dropped the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on rural Cambodia during 1969-73. They leveled village after village, returning to bomb the rubble and corpses. The craters left monstrous necklaces of carnage, still visible from the air. A former Khmer Rouge official described how the survivors “froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half-crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told . . . That was what made it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win the people over.”
What really prompted it? In the case of human beings, the answer is almost never “because they’re animals and it’s in their nature to do it.” Racism throughout world and contemporary history has held to the same fallacy of reasoning.
If you examine the history of conflict in the region, focusing particularly on the beginning of the current Israeli administration, starting in 2009, and the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank by Israel, and then focus on the repeated use of force and authoritative abuse there, situation by situation, it may bring a clearer context to those unforgivable Hamas atrocities, and you may get a better understanding of what’s really going on.
Normally, nobody knows history, nobody understands context. And if you do, thanks for proving me wrong.
* – actors may not have actually appeared in the church camp porno of my memory.
