v5#3
June 20, 2006

Special
Seppuku Issue

 

        When the vergers of journalistic propriety began to demur about "suicide bombers" in favor of "murder bombers," it seemed unnecessarily tedious to me. Naturally, one is appalled at the human carnage wreaked by these murderous monsters, but no more so than with the other methods of attacking civilian populations that have been experienced in the last century. It is entirely wholesome, it is a parable in a nutshell, to identify the culprit as one who deliberately destroyed his own life in criminal pursuit of his target, though it is but cold comfort to know that the death penalty was infallibly inflicted on the bomber, by his own hand and design. This promptness and certainty in the application of capital punishment seems unreachably remote in our own system, by contrast.
        Originally, I believed that the suicide bomber tactic would eventually result in a self-created shortage of bombers, and thus render itself impracticable. I was wrong. The Islamic hegemonists have figured out some way of manufacturing a virtually unlimited supply of these dodos. The Coulter solution seems more attractive than ever.
         [America should "invade their [the terrorists'] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter, Sept. 12, 2001]

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        There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.
        ... Cyril Connolly

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        He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
        ... The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies, 1776

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        The recent unpleasantness with Japan (late 1941 ff.) is still too fresh in the minds of American patriots to risk offering anything like genuine praise to Japanese culture. But as a response to the shame of public exposure resulting from malfeasance in office or failure in duty, the Japanese practice of seppuku (ritual suicide, sometimes called hara-kiri) is too fine a contribution to the human race entirely to ignore. Importing seppuku into American culture may be difficult, but the idea should not be dismissed out of hand.
        Imagine, for a moment, that each government bureaucrat who has done a wrong to one of the taxpayers could be plausibly threatened with such exposure and were thus overcome by the guilt of his deed. Suppose each jack-in-office were struck in the conscience with the knowledge of his misdemeanors by the vision of public humiliation. In view of the swarms of officials now enforcing government's will and consuming the substance of the citizens (complained about on at least one previous occasion, with decisive results; see reading, above), the magnitude of the potentially repentant throng is staggering. And to each, the Japanese approach to absolution could be recommended.
        Now, I do not insist on the precise technique employed by the Japanese practitioners of seppuku. It is frankly rather grisly. American tradition provides numerous reasonable options: the rope, pills, a gun to the temple, a leap from on high, etc. Modern technology affords a host of new alternatives, for many of which the end need hardly disturb the senses (see Lethal Injection, elsewhere). There is no reason why it cannot be quite humane. The thing most earnestly to be sought is the internal conviction of wrongdoing.
        For each government official who has argued or acted for evil against an honest citizen, for each government accountant who has interpreted an ambiguous rule against the interest of a citizen, for each clerk or civil employee who has shirked responsibility to a taxpayer or cheated on a timesheet or received a benefit from a contractor or lobbyist, and most of all, for each government department manager or legislator or judge who has created a rule or law which unjustly burdens a citizen or who has made a decision affecting a citizen's well-being based on political considerations rather than justice--for each of these, be assured that judgment is coming, but there is a remedy for the ailing conscience, thanks to the Japanese.
        I imagine a wave of suicides among the civil service and government employees. Some government agencies, like the Department of Agriculture or HHS or the Justice Department, could suffer 80% or 90% casualties, while others, like the EPA or HUD or the Department of Labor, might be entirely emptied of all service personnel, leaving only the janitorial crews to clean up and shut the doors. Not a dozen in Congress would survive. The federal bench would have vacancies from the lowest courts to the highest. In extraordinary cases, as for instance, the Department of Education, the remorse could extend even beyond the bureaucrats out into state governments and the university staffs that have provided their training.
        The Post would have to devote 150 pages to the help wanted ads. Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia, the two counties in America with the highest per capita income (I wonder why), would be virtually deserted, under police guard to prevent looting. Pedestrians would amble across the Beltway at rush hour untouched.
        The caskets of the penitents could be lined up by the hundreds on the Capitol steps. I envision streams of hearses, stretching clear out to Georgetown, providing appropriately solemn transport in and out, 24 hours a day. The cheering throngs of citizens, standing twenty and thirty deep, would be held behind police lines for miles along the route. As the caskets briefly lie in state, it would warm any patriot's heart to say shiva over them in groups of a thousand.
        It could take weeks.

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        And what if the practice of honorable seppuku spread to the prognosticators whose judgments underlie public policy?
        One immediately senses that the possibilities are boundless. The various Chicken Littles who are trying to beggar the nation are the most obvious candidates. But it could be even more detailed and specific.
        Each increase in the crime rate could take with it in shame the lives of those sociologists most prominent in advocating rehabilitation or gun control. The swaying back and forth of the economy could whisk away in disgrace hundreds of malpredictive economists with each swing up or down. The publishers of opinion polls could be thus subject to review and recall with similarly fatal results. Even weather forecasters... no, that is asking too much.
        But it must be admitted that the benefits to society accruing from the systematic self-elimination of faulty elements hold great attractions. For instance, the constant refreshment of the legions of bureaucratic jobs with new blood and vastly sobered ambitions would likely result in a soundness of thought and a care for the proper execution of duties on a scale never before seen. Think of the savings in improper expense claims, false overtime reports, fixed bids, even casual graft and embezzlement--no prosecutions, no Inspectors General, nor even any internal audits would be necessary. The nightmare of one department of the executive suing another department in court, or levying fines on another agency of government, would become a mere excursion of executive malfeasance, safely confined to history. [In case it slipped your notice, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight and the Securities and Exchange Commission jointly fined Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) $400 million recently, just as they had fined Freddie Mac (another government-sponsored enterprise) $125 million in 2003.]
        The federal government would, for lack of personnel, be unable to conduct many of the oppressions that are presently routine. Imagine that the first complaint from a citizen would cause the retraction of some imaginary "endangered species" and the demise of its advocates. Envision the seizure that would grip the thousands of administrative law courts no longer able to render their Solomonic judgments on civil forfeiture or abrogation of property rights for fear of injuring an honest citizen. Contemplate the situation of gun control--no bureaucrat would enforce those laws for fear of disarming an honest citizen facing a mortal threat. Conceptualize the serpentine processes of the Agriculture Department or the Bureau of Land Management or of Indian Affairs frozen in place for lack of personnel willing to run the risk of moral offense. It fairly dazzles the mind.
        Finally, we must consider the effects of honorable seppuku on the hundreds of thousands of lawyers that survive on a system of laws that promote their own perpetuation. Visualize the legal aid bureaus unable, in good conscience, to provide anyone to defend the guilty, or personal injury law firms forced to reject all the swindles they feed off of, or combines of political advisors and consultants finding themselves cruelly limited to strict truthfulness.
        Many of these lawyers, overcome by the guilt of their past wrongdoing, would feel compelled to seek immediate expiation. Others, living in constant fear of exposure, would go into hiding, living in anonymous obscurity, attempting to escape eventual, inevitable public disgrace. The inspiring image of thousands of lawyers demonstrating their remorse in waves and battalions, perhaps beginning with the highest LSAT scores, puts all other ambitions for seppuku to shame. I cannot picture the event without also hearing a great shout of joy and relief from millions of their innocent victims at the same time, followed by great festivals and commemorations to inspire the recognition of future anniversaries.
        'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd.

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        The heart of honorable seppuku is to be found in its imbedding in society. Without the demands and constraints of society, there is no impulse to the shame that rests on public exposure. In society's absence, only the shame of bad conscience can have the desired effect, and that rests on--what? the basic honesty of those attracted to high office or officialdom? I think we have sampled quite enough of that!
        No, it is not worth further contemplation--it is society that must impose the ethic, through early training, social reinforcement, the veneration of icons, public ritual--in short, all the means presently used by society to instill hallowed values. It works so well now; why not simply add to the list of virtues the respect for honorable seppuku?
        Consider society's icons, how they uphold and sustain our most precious values. What progress could be made in business without the spur of Trump envy? Where would we be as a nation without constant Kennedy veneration? Recall what a depression set in upon the fall of Dan Rather from grace. These figures hold our highest admiration as a people. So, too, the counter-icons fulfill their roles. We would be at a loss if not for our frequent vilification of Bill Gates, George Bush, Ann Coulter, and the other Darth Vaders that inhabit the imaginary pantheon of society's dark side. Are there no iconic resources to be harnessed in support of honorable seppuku?
        And in more general terms, we must ask ourselves how envy of others (specific persons as well as ideals) drives our culture, as well as our economy. How could society survive without a daily infusion of lust for unearned wealth, like that enjoyed by lottery "winners"? "Who," precisely, "wants to be a millionaire?" Without envy, who would buy a car, drink a particular brand of beer, or use an aftershave or hair dye, or work morning to night at a meaningless job for the sake of a "higher standard of living?" Who would keep up with the Jones', those lucky, imaginary neighbors, whom we are asked to love as ourselves, but we prefer to envy? If the power of envy could be bent to the support of honorable seppuku on a national scale, might it not see some success?
        Suppose one of these bellwethers of contemporary culture could be convinced of the errors of his ways. Suppose that Trump could be overtaken by a conviction of his total self-absorption, callous vulgarity, rapacious ambition, and unbridled greed, and turned to seppuku for expiation; or that, one by one, the (political) Kennedys were persuaded that public exposure of their wrongs was too great a shame to live with, preferring to send their souls off to the Valhalla of their forefathers; or that Dan Rather, in a fit of remorse over his numberless perjuries, were to kneel before a tiny figurine of Bush and make atonement for his sins? Would not these examples send thousands of their followers and sycophants rushing to the cliffs like so many lemmings?
        Ah, the rapture that awaits us, but for one simple scruple--
        O that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter. For this is the one true obstacle. There is guilt aplenty. Wrong-doers abound. The means is readily at hand. But such remnants of the Christian religion as may still linger on these shores condemns the act of barging, uninvited, into one's eternal inheritance. Fragile as this force may be and as weakly held, it still exerts profound influence on the bedrock of Western values.
        So long as there is breath in the body and blood courses through the veins, says the rubric, there is still hope for repentance and reform. Suicide, besides indicating the mortal sin of ultimate despair, forecloses all hope for repentance and reform, and thus the sinner commits the sin and receives the punishment for it at the same time and in the same act. And while there are erosions in this bedrock value, and whole states (Oregon) that have abandoned it, it is likely still an insurmountable obstacle to wide-scale adoption of the final Japanese solution.
        So, we must let God be God, and let justice work itself out without forcing the matter. Hamlet's dilemma, where killing the king at prayer seems less like revenge and more like paying for murder by sending the murderer to Heaven, while the murdered lies unshriven in Hell, can only be unraveled by the solution Hamlet arrives at--waiting until the king

                ... is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
        Or in th' incestuous pleasure of his bed,
        At gaming, swearing, or about some act
        That has no relish of salvation in't,
        Then trip him that his heels may kick at heaven,
        And that his soul may be as damned and black
        As hell, whereto it goes.

        It works for me.

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        A collection point has been designated in the 72 Virgin Islands for donations to equip the Gitmo prisoners with suicide gear that matches their personal inclinations, according to a statement released by al-Harmony.com. Donations of ropes, chains, footstools, and other suitable equipment, will be airlifted to the prisoners as soon as they complete their free, online personality profiles. In view of last week's poor production output of only three successful suicides, it is clear that the equipment gap has to be bridged so the prisoners can meet their quota, al-Harmony.com said. According to a spokesman, "anyone" may donate, and the sooner the resources are made available at Gitmo, the "sooner the process can go forward."
        Authorities at Gitmo were unavailable for comment.

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        A touching retrospective on his father, by noted correspondent Chris Hedges, peeked out of the local newspaper's religion section as I was burning it this week. Hedges recalled his father's regard for those who "place compassion and tolerance above ideology and creed, and who reject absolutes, especially moral absolutes..."
        Does this mean that strapping on a bomb with the intention of blowing up a marketplace or a police station is actually a cry for help? Heavens! Bring home the troops and send 120,000 therapists!

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