In 1979 I lived in Starkville, MS. Mississippi State University is located in that pretty southern city. I was there to undertake my doctorate in psychology. A ‘bluebelly’, as I was referred to, residing in the Deep South. I loved every minute of it, including studying the Civil War.
I made fast friends with a man named Duffy. Duffy was a Civil War aficionado. Together we visited Civil War battlefields, hunted for musket balls in streams, drove through the countryside seeking door-stop Civil War shells and frequented every yard sale advertised. Picking up swords, muskets, knives, buttons, leather belts and cartridge boxes, artillery shells and even buckles. Often times we dressed like Civil War soldiers, freaking out visitors, as we walked through the woods of Vicksburg, Shiloh and Chattanooga to name a few.
To hold a spent artillery shell taken straight from the ground is an awe inspiring experience. To consider that the last person to touch this was probably a soldier back in 1864. The smell of a leather cartridge box that a farmer grabs from a trunk in his kitchen. Sometimes the greenish white brass shells with lead bullet still rolling around inside. The incredible feeling of holding a Civil War cavalrymen’s great coat wrapped around their 1840 Wrist Breaker. All of those experiences. brought that time and those people to life.
Decades later I studied airmen of WWl. These couragous men climbed into open cockpit planes wearing leather helmets, goggles, beautifully cut leather coats and beaver hide gloves. Flying miles in the air they risked their lives often times returning to base, their planes nearly stripped clean of the canvas covering the skeleton of their Sopwith Camel or Fokker.
Once again I was driven to deeply grasp the depth of this experience. I purchased WWl googles and leather helmets holding in my hands what protected the eyes and heads of these warriors. Giant furry gloves, pieces of old fighters, signed documents, binoculars and a tachometer all filled my room. And then one day I found it, the rarest of the rare. An actual British leather long coat worn by a pilot. The provenance in place I was the guardian of the most important piece of clothing a pilot wore as they faced German machine guns high up in the atmosphere. The weight of it. Again, the scent of it. Holding it I could feel the pilot. World War l actually occurred. There was no doubt.
Recently I was driven again by the need to KNOW about something specific. I always have needed to know things for myself. I have visited many an author, Indigenous elder, or sacred place so that I could experience ‘the truth’. But this most recent drive was very different. I had to KNOW the feeling and scent and sight of evil.
What drove me to this needing to know is complicated. As a person involved with Indigenous ceremony I am familiar with great beauty and kind spirits. The smells, sounds, colors, ethereal experiences and emotions are impossible to explain. There is no doubt in my mind that spirits exist and wish to help us. I KNOW that.
Simultaneously I’ve believed that evil existed. Believed. I needed to KNOW. With that in mind I would sit for hours ruminating on how to experience evil without putting myself in danger. I pondered evil deeds, evil times, evil people … and then it came to me in a flash. A way to experience evil just as I had experienced the Civil War and WWl pilots. Items touched by Nazi’s in WWll. Already the evils of WWll are being denied (concentration camp deniers) and forgotten and I needed to KNOW the realities as best I could.
Over time, only from people or dealers that could prove provenance, I purchased items from one of the darkest times in human history. A skull ring worn by a Gestapo, engraved with a slogan by Himmler. Another ring that Himmler gifted to people, inside a strychnine pill for when the Russians arrived. The yellow triangle with the word JUDA inscribed torn off an old coat. A bloodied armband from a Jew whose job it was to remove the bodies from the gas chambers. The armband of a KAPO found in the attic of a Polish farmhouse.
Holding these items one-by-one lead me to a knowing. A chilling soul searing KNOWING that the Gestapo existed, Himmler lived and the concentration camps are real. I mean I knew that before. But now I KNOW. You can’t help but cry when you hold some of the pieces. You can’t help but feel frightened when you hold others. These items hold the spirit of that time and those people. Purely visceral. Visceral.
Why do I need to know, not just believe, that evil existed and exists? The answer is simple. We live in another dark and evil time. Trump embodies evil. Biden with his smiling face embodies evil. If, as a nation, we don’t act now what I KNOW is that once again WE will experience the evil personally. Already the youth in Moscow faced it. The people of Ukraine. The slaughter and maimed children of Gaza.
We are next. What goes around comes around. This time do not be naive enough to believe we will once again avoid the horror of it all. The items I purchased have made it clear. The triangles will be worn by us. The armbands will be worn by us. And the skull rings … we will experience those as well. The clock has run out and the evils perpetrated by our country will come home to roost.
We believe we have two choices, Biden and Trump. It is what evil does. It makes us believe in IT. There are other choices for people who love freedom, peace and joy. Liberty and Justice for All. For All. Even those the CIA or the rich arms dealers or the rich oil men kill in Russia, Africa, South America, Europe and even here at home.
Evil is alive and well. I can smell it. See it. Feel it. Hear it. Do you?
The evidence is all around us. Piling up in the heaps of the dead and mangled in Gaza and our repeated delivery of cargo planes of 2,000-lb bombs to Israel. It is embodied in the creeping desertification of land and the bleaching of coral beds. The toll is present in every public space I enter where couples -- whole families -- are sitting in silence, glued to their phones. The stink of rot and evil is evident throughout our world. We are warned but not awake.
I just watched news interviews with Sec. of War Lloyd Austin, Sec. of State Tony Blinken and comments about Sen. Tom Cotton. Austin's body language was like blinking neon lights advertising his lying. Ghould like these are the clergy of evil. They too, are evidence before us.
It's hard to comment on a post like this but if I don't it looks like I don't care about what you have written. I do care. I am grateful that you are one of the very few people courageous enough to acknowledge and confront the dark. Yes I do see it. One day we will sit on a bench or better still around a good fire and laugh and laugh and laugh.
V