I am enraged
I’ve had a hard time learning what justice is
Though I have always raged against injustice
For the world had taught me
That justice meant punishing the disobedient
And I knew from my earliest experience
The impossibility of full obedience
And the arbitrariness of command
And I say with some pride
And no doubt with some arrogance
That I have raged not only against injustice
Perpetrated against myself
But against the injustices that I could see directly
Or displayed on television since the time
My family acquired a television when I was four
In the age of Joe McCarthy and George Wallace
And displayed to outrageous excess
In the age of the iron-headed
Mini-Mussolini mendacious murderous and moronic
And I have known almost instinctively
Probably because I grew up
In the age of Martin Luther King
That injustice anywhere
Is a threat to justice everywhere
And since injustice is indeed everywhere
I have despaired in the impotence of my rage
But
I have learned
Mostly through the patience of my friend the philosopher
Who introduced me to Galen Strawson and Derek Parfit
To Kant and to the Socrates of Plato
That nobody is fully responsible
That my father’s wrath
Who was not at all exclusively wrathful
But also loving and enthusiastic
Was beyond his control
That we enjoy to some extent the capacity for self-control
But that the application of that capacity
Is a hit-or-miss affair
Limited and unpredictable
Hemmed in by our animal passions
Our human frailties
And our unasked-for pathologies
And so in my advancing or advanced age
I am overcoming to some extent
The harmful habit of the reflex for rage
Although I by no means disclaim
The righteousness of my indignation
And overcoming along the way
The reflex to turn my rage against myself
For every person is worthy of respect
Even fault-ridden me
And even the iron-headed pissant in command
It’s a tough lesson
The hardest lesson I know
To feel compassion for the wrongdoer
So I retract pissant but glaringly do not delete it
The supreme leader in a democracy
Is a contradiction in terms
And whoever cherishes the delusion
Of supreme leadership
Is a poor deluded schmuck
No try again
Is a poor unfortunate clod
No try again
Is a pitiable wounded sufferer
And thus the current President
Shares this characteristic with me
Of having suffered
But
I have learned from suffering and have resolved
Though I often fall short
Never to impose suffering on any person
Myself or other
And how mild is our suffering
The President’s and mine
Who are white and privileged
And venerable in age
And nobody deserves punishment
For punishment is simply
The deliberate causation of suffering
A spurious leveling of the scales
A pretended payback of blood price
For which no price can be paid
And justice is simply this
That none should suffer
If their suffering can be prevented