COLUMNISTS

On the nature of evil

Take the word of an old devil

There may be at least as many definitions of the news as there are sections of the paper-from the sports to business to the comic strips to the front page, not excluding the classifieds and all the other ads. News is Man Bites Dog, the unusual. It is also the usual, for as one astute commentator observed long ago, “The sun also ariseth, and goeth down, and hastens to the place where he arose. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” Yet we must keep up with all the latest non-developments. It’s the news! And it’s our civic duty to follow Current Events.

The news has also been called the first draft of history, and one astute publisher said it was anything somebody didn’t want published, while all the rest of the paper was advertising.

You pays your money-the daily paper costs a dollar these days at the newsstand-and you takes your choice when it comes to definitions of what is news. There are many. My nominee today: The news is morality taught by example.

Thursday’s front page had such a lesson in good and evil, and how to advance the latter.Indeed, it may be the most efficient way to entrench evil in the world: not by some dramatic decree that catches everybody’s attention but gradually, subtly, slowly but surely. Baby step by baby step. Almost unnoticeably.

But last Thursday, somebody on the copy desk blew the whistle on that tried-and-proven technique, which may be Old Ned’s favorite.And the result was a big, bold-faced headline you couldn’t miss:

Light’s green/for onscreen/lottery games.

And still some of us couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. It’s just a few more electronic games to tempt the suckers and boost revenues for the Arkansas Lottery. So what? It’s not exactly the crime of the century, just one more small step down a smooth, familiar road. Just one more step forward for Arkansas’ official, bonafide, perfectly legal numbers racket. What’s the problem? Let the games begin!

One of the lottery commissioners who voted to go ahead with this new pitch for the poor suckers’ remaining money explained that this minor addition to the lottery’s list of temptations was only a “fairly small, incremental move on the lottery’s part.”

That was Julie Baldridge of Little Rock speaking, bless her heart. She wanted to know why just a few more electronic games at your nearest convenience story or supermarket could get folks so stirred up-when we’ve had perfectly legal horse racing in this state for the longest time, and the race tracks just added internet games to their list of attractions, too. Yes, some of us objected to that change at the time, but our objections never had the force of the public’s sudden revulsion at the lottery’s latest little piece of electronic sucker bait.

To quote Ms. Baldridge, “I don’t see how one kind of gambling increasing, and not being horrified at that, but being horrified about the possibility if we move to make some incremental changes.”

She doesn’t get it, does she? She sounds puzzled, sincerely puzzled, by all the uproar. Any reference to evil in connection with the lottery’s latest little ol’ expansion would surely strike her as overblown, to say the least. Why would anyone even introduce the subject of capital-E Evil into this discussion? This is only about a needed revenue boost for the lottery, nothing more. Which is just the line of reasoning, or rather the line of assumption, that old Beelzebub counts on to further his quiet, best-laid plans.

Ms. Baldridge wants to know why people are so horrified at one form of gambling-a few more electronic games at the lottery-but not at another when it’s added at the race tracks. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, it’s because this one is new. And being new, still has shock value.The race tracks have been there so long, they’re almost features of the natural landscape, like the hills and creeks, and, like the hills and creeks, it may take a conscious effort to really notice them. The lottery is everywhere, too, or seems so. There’s no getting away from it, whether you’re just filling up at the Get It ’n’ Go or waiting at the checkout line at Kroger with the kids in tow. Only because this is a new temptation does it attract our fleeting attention. Before it, too, becomes just part of the scenery. Which is just the way the gentleman in the red socks wants it. For nothing aids and abets evil like its not being recognized as evil.

Only when the serpent stirs in the grass might it catch our attention. And then the novelty of it passes, and what was shocking, at least for a moment, no longer raises any objections. Certainly not from the Julie Baldridges of the world who dismiss its dangers. Hey, it’s just an incremental change.

C.S. Lewis, a Christian apologist of some note, said it. Or rather he had his devilish amanuensis, old Screwtape, say it in one of his letters to his nephew, a young demon who was just learning the trade and needed some guidance: “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts . . .” And a lottery commissioner who wonders why folks are making such a fuss over just a little gradual change-yes, just an incremental change -makes a perfect instrument for Uncle Screwtape’s subtle designs on all of us. Recommended reading: The Screwtape Letters.

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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Editorial, Pages 16 on 04/23/2014

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