Tweet [1]
… is from page 55 of the 1984 Penguin Classics edition of Alessandro Manzoni [2]’s great mid-1820s novel, The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi), translated by the late Bruce Penman [3]:
Bullies, oppressors and all men who do violence to the rights of others are guilty not only of their own crimes, but also of the corruption they bring into the hearts of their victims.
DBx: To understand this reality is to better understand the terribleness of oppression: it spawns itself.
Second-generation oppression, however, is no less oppressive and no more justified than was the first-generation oppression that served as its irresponsible parent. The same is true of third-generation oppression. And fourth. And fifth. And forever. With oppression, predictable realities differ wholly from what is normatively desirable. Best never in the first place to oppress. But once this vile seed has been sown, justice – true, achievable justice – is possible only if the child renounces the parents’ wicked ways by refusing to become a poisonous, devastatingly destructive weed.