The Modernity of Cruelty

Around Thanksgiving, someone asked me what Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men was about. I should have just answered that it was about a guy who stumbles onto the scene of a drug deal gone bad, wanders among the wreckage and dead bodies, finds a bag of money, then spends the remainder of the novel eluding a hit-man sent to kill him while a good-hearted old Texas sheriff tries to save him. That would have been interesting. But, possibly because my present project requires me to think of myself as a writer, I felt compelled to expound upon the theme. “It’s about . . . well, let’s see. It’s about the way that the extreme ferocity of modern crime and the viciousness of some people nowadays is without precedent. How it didn’t used to be that way. And how an old sheriff in Texas just has to throw up his hands, because the crimes happening in America today aren’t like the crimes that he used to work on as a young man. Modern crime has passed him by so . . . so, it’s like this isn’t a country for old men anymore.” That’s what I said. Most likely, my attempt to sound smart was driven not only by a desire to sound writerly, but by the proximity of a pretty girl. Which is understandable. But whether I was motivated by my self-image or the impulse to show off, I said that the modern world was meaner than it used to be.


But history doesn’t support that statement. Cruelty is confined neither to modern times nor to American culture. For historical examples of cruelty , we need look no further than the young girls burned at the stake as witches in the 16- and 1700s. For cruelty outside of American culture, we can look to the many Native American tribes in the 1800s that tortured their captives, white and Indian alike, in various horrible ways. Burning at the stake was one of them.

Modern American culture can be, at times, a culture of self-flagellation. That’s especially true where Native Americans are concerned. And certainly, America has much to be sorry for in its treatment of Indians – lying to the Indians, cheating them, nearly exterminating their food sources, and in places slaughtering their women and children. None of that is excusable. For many years, some Americans justified these actions by dehumanizing the Indians. That shows a serious lack of judgment. Objectivity required that America recognize that its treatment of Native Americans was wrong. But in some ways, we have lately overreacted in the opposite direction. Now there are some who will excoriate Americans, but admit no imperfection in Native American cultures. That viewpoint also lacks objectivity. The best way to remember the past is the way that it actually occurred: many Indians tortured their captives in horrendous ways. That does not excuse America’s conduct toward Native Americans, but nor does it permit the conclusion that horrible cruelty is a modern American invention.