Respect the dead

We live in a world driven by the promise of change. Politicians are prime examples: they are masters at telling people that things will be different if votes are cast for them. But it is not just the politicians: many people from all walks of life have mastered the art of saying “next year” or “next time,” implying that circumstances will be different given some time and a little luck. Yet, it seems that “next year” always seems to bring with it one thing that was just as prevalent during the previous year: the general lack of respect for the recently deceased.

There have been several prominent examples during the past few years that illustrate this kind of behavior. When Margaret Thatcher passed away in 2013, many Brits took to the streets to celebrate, chanting such things as “so long, the witch is dead” and “Maggie Maggie Maggie, dead dead dead.” Not to be outdone, Americans took to the Twitterverse when Justice Antonin Scalia passed away earlier this year, where they reveled in the his death. It was, in the eyes of many, a perfectly normal reaction. Or was it?

Katie Halper, speaking for many of the keyboard warriors, penned a piece in which she argues that Scalia was a horrible person who didn’t deserve a shred of respect. Why? Because, according to her, Scalia would “react to the loss of human life with heartlessness, cruelty and adherence to his own conviction.” Thus, in her mind, she should do the same at his passing. This idea is extremely problematic on its own, but it is perhaps most disheartening that so many other people wholeheartedly agree with it.

One major problem with Harper’s reasoning is that it begins with “Well, Scalia was a human being, but…” Why does this statement need to be qualified? lf Scalia was indeed a human being (which he was, despite some people who might argue the contrary), then he deserves the most basic respect that human beings deserve. That is, one should never lose sight of his humanity and treat him as something less than human, which is just what Harper and company did when they celebrated his death as if their favorite team had just won the Super Bowl. And how ironic that this is exactly what they accused Scalia of doing! I suppose two wrongs do make a right after all.

The hypocrisies do not end there. I wonder what would happen if people took to the streets to celebrate if President Obama were to pass away, or if people flocked to Twitter to denigrate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg after her passing. I suspect many Scalia haters would be outraged and demand respect for the departed’s loved ones. Perhaps people could take a page from Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself, who, despite being about as ideologically different from Scalia as one can be, honored her fellow justice after his death, calling the two of them “best buddies.” After all, we are not defined by the way we treat the people we like—it isn’t that hard to be nice to someone you care about. Rather, it is the manner in which we treat the people we dislike that defines our true character.

As troubling as these celebrations of death may seem, they pale in comparison to the underlying idea behind them: that some people are simply evil, and as such, their passing away is a boon to the human race. Such notions are not only despicable in their assumption that some people are beyond hope, but also puzzling because they completely ignore the impact of death. The vast majority of people have either lost someone they loved or know someone who has. As such, they should understand that the passing away of a human being is a tragic event. Losing someone one cares about hurts, sometimes for a long time. And no matter how evil you think someone else is, you cannot delude yourself into believing that there do not exist people in the world who care about them. Thus, it is hard to understand how there can be such a general lack of empathy following the deaths of some people. As Harper herself says about Scalia, “He’s someone’s father! Someone’s husband!” So why completely ignore the pain that his wife and children are feeling?

It must be said that there is a flipside to all of this. Glenn Greenwald makes a good point in a piece in which he argues that one cannot simply ignore Thatcher’s controversial policies and throw platitudes her way simply because she has recently passed away. It is true that no one should be forced to say nice things about someone who has just died. Yes, there are bad people in the world, and if one feels that the bad things said people did are being ignored, then one certainly has a right to speak up. But criticizing the policies and beliefs of the recently departed is a far cry from the grave dancing that Halper endorses. One can express hope for the people the deceased will no longer affect or regret that the deceased was not a better person when they were alive, but taking joy from their death is several steps too far.

In the end, many of the world’s problems can be reduced to one simple idea: people not treating each other with the respect that they deserve. Most people are not awful human beings, but as previously mentioned, their actions sometimes suggest otherwise. The issue of delighting in the passing of others is important, and it extends far beyond Antonin Scalia and Margaret Thatcher and far past the divisions between the left and the right. For if we cannot respect the dead, how can we begin to respect the living?