The Horrors of Barbers and N. Ireland

Wallis insightfully compares the new movie, Sweeney Todd, starring Johnny Depp, the violent history of Northern Ireland, and our current political campaign. The movie stars Depp as a 19^th century barber who seeks revenge for the loss off his wife and daughter through his customers, and the move makes the point that “Sweeney’s spiral of violence never ends.” Wallis had also previously attending a conference dealing with methods of helping the people of Northern Ireland to address their violent history. Two things were made clear at this meeting: first, that there is an unimaginable depth of genuine sorrow in that society, and the common lack of ability to empathize with the pain of others in the community (seeing our pain as “exclusive”).

Wallis argues that the traits that appear in situations of “deep horror” also appear in more benign contexts such as political campaigning. Acknowledging that politics is though and it is easy to become emotionally involved, he recognizes that even Clinton is human and needs to be treated as so. Just as in class how we were talking about the family dog and a natural disaster in China, a reporter in Newsweek tried to slight Clinton by saying how disgraceful it was that she cried about her campaign but did not shed tears about Hurricane Katrina. As horrible as the tragedy was, I am sure many American’s did not cry about Hurricane Katrina, but that they have cried as a result of much more miniscule dilemmas than a campaign.

Wallis goes on to explain that a cynical world breeds the opposite of compassion, and when there is no compassion, killing can begin. As killing seems extreme for us Americans in our democratic elections, our political campaigns are often “reduced to mocking [and] dehumanizing” and who knows just how far off killing can be. It is a gradual slope that is becoming steeper and steeper.