The proper study of man is man.
This is something I was told in college, at least in the Department of Anthropology, which was part of my major (which spanned three departments.) The Anthropology department was, by far, the most flamboyant, fun and exhilarating faculty on campus, as far as I was concerned, but, it must be admitted, the other departments I traveled through (chemistry, biology, sociology, psychology) were not populated by the most scintillating specimens of humanity.
The anthropologists had lived exotic places, like Alaska, Greenland, Africa and New Zealand and they sported beards and nothing could shock them.
On Wednesday evenings they did "Anthro flicks" which included "Dead Birds" about warring tribes in New Guinea. They were the antidote to the chemistry and biology faculty who seemed intent on shrinking our brains; the anthropologists naturally expanded our brains.
Among the books they submitted for our consideration was Colin Turnbull's "The Mountain People."
Now, this was a cunning choice. "Cultural Relativity" was all the rage in academic circles in the mid 1960's, an argument that we should not judge other cultures as being lovely or vile, because we all see others through the lenses formed in our own cultures. To be scientific, we should simply describe, as accurately and dispassionately as we can, what we see as the values by which other cultures live. But we should not judge, lest we be judged.
Turnbull had written "The Forest People" about the Bantu, and he tried to remain objective--nevertheless the virtues of their kindness, cooperation and altruism shined through. But when it came to the Ik, a hunter gatherer people who were shunted into the highlands between Sudan, Kenya and Uganda, with resultant starvation, deprivation and impoverishment, the usual manifestations of "human kindness" withered, and they would laugh at babies who crawled into cooking fires--one less mouth to feed.
It was hard to describe objectively people who had no sympathy, and even antipathy, toward their own children.
Nevertheless, the exercise of trying to see people whose culture fostered and embraced what looked like horrific practices is mind expanding.
If you look at the Third Reich, you have the value of extolling the Volk, the "German race," Aryans, of blonde hair, blue eyes, lean, hard and athletic bodies and the obverse of that coin, the animosity toward other races, Roma (gypsies), Jews, Black people. It was the logical progression to treat these swarthy people as not being human beings. And, if you had an agrarian substrate, herding cattle for slaughter, pigs, cows, chickens was not seen as repugnant, so why should herding Jewish children into buildings to burn them or into gas chambers be seen as being repugnant?
Having said that, Mark Mazower mentions that the mental reaction of even SS officers to firing squads killing children was prevalent enough, and strong enough to drive the development of gas chambers to replace firing squads. It was as if, even in that culture of the Third Reich, something deeper than Aryan supremacist doctrine caused at least some soldiers disquietude.
At the Nuremberg trials, Nazis were convicted of "crimes against humanity," the basic assertion being there are some values shared by all people who are members of the human species: a will to keep children from harm, a refusal to kill harmless people, defenseless people. Even the less active behavior of simply herding prisoners into areas and not feeding them, of enforcing starvation, was ultimately found to be inhuman.
Working or marching people to death was added to the list.
But, from the standpoint of the culture where resided Reinhard Heydrich, Henrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, Wilhelm Frick, Alfred Rosenberg, Joseph Goebbels, and the rest of the officials who met for the Wannsee Conference, where they planned the "final solution," mass killings of children, harmless women, defenseless men made good sense.
These sub-humans simply did not belong in the Reich or any of the territories the Reich claimed and overran to provide "lebensraum" (living space) for good Aryan Volk.
Their model, as Hitler reminded them, was the treatment of American Indians by the American government, and its generals, like the redoubtable Philip Sheridan, who said, famously, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," and whose boss at the time, William Tecumseh Sherman nodded in tacit agreement. Expelling Indians from lands white Americans wanted for living space was not even questioned. While Indian reservations may not have been as hideous as concentration camps, famine was not uncommon. Sheridan observed that to defeat the Indians the most efficient method was to slaughter all the buffalo on which the Indians depended. Russian POWs, herded into camps where food was controlled by their guards may have recognized this tactic.
The Nazis had initially planned to round up and deport all the Jews within reach of the Reich to the island of Madagascar, but once the battle of Britain was lost, it was apparent the war would not be short and the British Navy could intervene, so it was decided to simply kill the not Aryans in place. More efficient. Just as effective, maybe more.
So when you look at the plan, the final solution, using the values of the Nazi, Third Reich culture, it made sense.
And now, we have masked, armed, swarming ICE agents rounding up people who, as Justice Kavanaugh observed, look like illegal aliens, and abduct them, just as Jews were abducted, but instead of loading them onto trains, they load them onto planes and whisk them off to, not Madagascar, but Honduras, El Salvador or Sudan.
It all makes sense, if you see it through MAGA eyes. "They" don't belong here. They are undesirables.
And law, as the Supreme Court has so clearly told us, is what the justices say it is, and they agree that law is what Mr. Trump says it is.
