Down with Everyone and Their Mother

Turkish talisman against the evil eye

In all the rapidly rising fever of bust-busting, I see nobody speaking of the real reason it is happening.

This is important, because the true cause is arguably the deadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins. Envy is the one sin that never dare speak its name; making it especially difficult to root out. For this reason, it is vitally important to see and name it when it appears. It is sinister that nobody is in this case. And it is fantastically common. Most folk cultures worldwide are vitally concerned with the “Evil Eye.” It is envy they are talking about.

The nominal reasons these statues are being torn down are obviously spurious: they differ statue by statue. Nor is there any sense that the statues torn down represent the worst offenders, of whatever crime they are charged with. It is perhaps worth mentioning that there is a mural of Benito Mussolini still displayed inside a Montreal church. Nobody has called for its removal. Not even during the World War.

Benny Muscles visits Little Italy.

It goes without saying that any possible mortal could be accused of some moral depravity. It is always possible to find such a reason to tear down a statue. Mobs have now torn down effigies of Mahatma Gandhi, Francis Scott Key, Ulysses S. Grant, Saint Junipero Serra. It is not that we are not all saints—there is not even a saint without sin. Moses murdered a man. St. Paul probably murdered many. If sinlessness is suddenly the standard, all statues must come down.

No, this pandemic of statue-tipping is because of envy. Nobody paints over Mussolini, because nobody envies him. The fact of a statue proclaims that someone has done something worth notice with their life. That is intolerable to any narcissist who has not. The same motive is behind assassination: you want to kill John Lennon or John Kennedy not because of their politics, but because they are famous and you are not. The same motive is behind our hysterical cancel culture. It is an epidemic of envy.

But statues, for the narcissist, are especially seductive: one is not only attacking the person commemorated, but the sculptor, his talent, his achievement. Destroy it all!

The instinct toward envy necessarily ends in the ruin of all good things. It is always easier to pull down than to build.

This is the way we are now headed: the deadliest sins running wild in the streets