The Cruelty Of Capitalism And Trump World

The Staggering, Heartless Cruelty Toward the Elderly A global pandemic doesn’t give us cause to treat the aged callously.

Shai Held

President, dean, and chair in Jewish Thought at Hadar

Crises can elicit compassion, but they can also evoke callousness. 

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve witnessed 

communities coming together (even as they have sometimes been 

physically forced apart), and we’ve seen individuals engaging in 

simple acts of kindness to remind the sick and quarantined 

that they are not forgotten. Yet from some quarters, we’ve also 

seen a degree of cruelty that is truly staggering.

Earlier today, a friend posted on Facebook about an experience he’d 

just had on the Upper West Side of Manhattan: “I heard a guy who looked 

to be in his 20s say that it’s not a big deal cause the elderly are gonna

die anyway. Then he and his friend laughed … Maybe I’m lucky that 

I had awesome grandparents and maybe this guy didn’t but what is 

wrong with people???” Some have tried to dress up their 

heartlessness as generational retribution. As someone tweeted at 

me earlier today, “To be perfectly honest, and this is awful, 

but to the young, watching as the elderly over and over and over 

choose their own interests ahead of Climate policy kind of feels like 

they’re wishing us to a death they won’t have to experience. It’s a 

sad bit of fair play.”

Notice how the all-too-familiar rhetoric of dehumanization works: 

“The elderly” are bunched together as a faceless mass, all of 

them considered culprits and thus effectively deserving of the 

suffering the pandemic will inflict upon them. Lost entirely is the 

fact that the elderly are individual human beings, each with a 

distinctive face and voice, each with hopes and dreams, 

memories and regrets, friendships and marriages, loves lost and 

loves sustained. But they deserve to die—and as for us, we can 

just go about our business.

It is bad enough if we remain indifferent to the plight of our elders; 

it is far worse to dress up our failings as moral indignation.

As a rabbi and theologian watching this ethical train wreck, I find 

myself thinking about the biblical mandate to “honor your father and 

mother.” The Hebrew word usually translated as “honor,” kabed, comes 

from a root meaning “weight.” At the deepest level, then, the biblical 

command is thus to treat the elderly as weighty. Conversely, the 

Bible prohibits “cursing” one’s parents. The Hebrew word usually 

translated as “curse,” tekalel, derives from a root meaning “light.” 

At bottom, then, the biblical proscription is on treating the elderly 

lightly, as if they are inconsequential.

Why do I say “the elderly”? In its biblical context, the obligation to honor 

parents is a command given to grown children 

(as are the Ten Commandments more broadly—you don’t tell 

children not to commit adultery nor to covet their neighbors’ fields). 

When you are an adult, the Bible instructs, you must not abandon 

the elderly. Giving voice to a pervasive human fear, the Psalmist prays,

 “Do not cast me off in old age; when my strength fails, do not forsake me!”

What does it say about our society that people think of the elderly so 

dismissively—and moreover, that they feel no shame about 

expressing such thoughts publicly? I find myself wondering whether 

this colossal moral failure is exacerbated by the most troubled parts of our 

cultural and economic life. When people are measured and valued 

by their economic productivity, it is easy to treat people whose most 

economically productive days have passed as, well, worthless.

From a religious perspective, if there is one thing we ought to teach our 

children, it is that our worth as human beings does not depend on or 

derive from what we do or accomplish or produce; we are, each of us,

 infinitely valuable just because we are created in the image of God. 

We mattered before we were old enough to be economically productive, 

and we will go on mattering even after we cease to be economically 

productive.

Yascha Mounk: Cancel everything

Varied ethical and religious traditions each find their own ways to 

affirm an elemental truth of human life: The elderly deserve our respect 

and, when necessary, our protection. The mark of a decent society is that 

it resists the temptation to spurn the defenseless. It is almost a truism 

that the moral fabric of a society is best measured by how it treats the 

vulnerable in its midst—and yet it is a lesson we never seem to tire of 

forgetting. “You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old,” 

the Bible says—look out for them and, in the process, become more human 

yourself.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the 

editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

SHAI HELD is the president, dean, and chair in Jewish Thought at Hadar, 

where he also directs the Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas.

My Op Ed: Some people are simply no damn good. Nazis, skin heads and White supremacists are and example of that reality. Punching Nazis should be a requirement because when someone declares they are a Nazi they have declared their intent. Keep in mind, when capitalism goes unchecked, it becomes corporatism. Corporatism is really another word for fascism. 

Trumpism is Nazism. Nazis killed anyone they believed was inferior to the mythical Aryan race. Trump supporters are Nazis. Trump didn't create them he's merely exploiting the vast and unmitigated evil within them. Nazis despise the meek, weak and the elderly.  They see no value in anyone who can't put wealth into the coffers of the filthy rich ruling class. 

Germany was purged of a fair percentage of its Nazis at the end of WW-2 and as a result Germany is now a peaceful and moral society. Fascism is not learned. Brain scans of people on the far right prove this. Fascism and Nazism is genetic and generic.

Calvinists believe that some people are born so depraved that they are beyond redemption and therefore condemned to hell for all eternity. It is rare that a Klansman will denounce his beliefs and when it happens it becomes news. Don't be fooled into thinking the depravity that causes someone to be ignorant, remorseless,  greedy, immune to truth, immune to logic and malevolent is largely a product of nurture. Science tells us that's it's mostly a product of nature. When someone tells you that there is good in everyone, please know that anyone who would utter such nonsense is dangerously naive.

Nuremberg happened for a good reason.