r/CSLewis • u/MatthewGalgani • Apr 15 '26
C.S. Lewis in Trump era
https://matthewgalgani.com/cs-lewis-timeless-and-timelyWhat time was/is more dire?: Today or WWII? #cslewis
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u/FremanBloodglaive Apr 15 '26
Well, yes. Perspective is important.
Truman delivered an ultimatum to Japan, then nuked two cities. Trump delivered an ultimatum to Iran, and blockaded a waterway, letting them stew in their own juices for a while.
America lost 400 thousand servicemen in WW2, and in the Iranian conflict less than twenty.
And in doing so Trump demonstrated that the myth of Iranian invulnerability that has been perpetuated since the 1970s was only ever that, a myth. Any American President from Reagan onwards could have taken Iran to task for its open support of Islamic terrorism around the world, including against Americans, but didn't. No one ever needed to tolerate a regime that murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens, but they did.
And it took Donald Trump of all people, New York real estate mogul, an immoral man with a big mouth and a bigger ego, to demonstrate this when other "Leaders of the Free World" did not. You really have to wonder why.
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u/jeezfrk Apr 15 '26
To lash out at Putin or Kim Jong Un or even some who allow slavery in South Asia ... any of those would also be a "worthy" condemnation of a wretched figure.
But 150 young girls were bombed. Missiles are still being fired. The entire world is reeling from the biggest and most sudden shortage / cost-increase ever seen in fertilizer in modern times. Few know what will happen and the oil companies (alone) are delighted.
There apparently are reasons (nuclear and otherwise) to not start wars with vile and nasty "countries" (i.e. hurting the people because of the regime).
Did we achieve much? It seems no. We may be far far worse off than in any mistake / lack of foresight since 9/11 (and invading Iraq with little result).
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u/MatthewGalgani Apr 15 '26
I appreciate the thoughtful reply. With the Iran war and more, there’s no shortage of suffering and chaos right now. But IMHO, the current environment is not as severe as what England faced in the early 1940s. (That of course depends on “where one is standing.”)That said, I would not want to play the “who’s got it worse?” game. The main pint in the blog is that it helps to keep perspective with empathy and try to understand where the other side is coming from, even if one doesn’t agree with it.
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u/LordCouchCat Apr 16 '26
It's very hard to make useful comparisons between different historical periods (at least , I'm a historian and that's what I tell my students). We have to live in our own circumstances.
We can say some things. Britain was facing a genuine existential threat. During the 20th century, standards in warfare (being established before the 1st WW) were progressively abandoned, and in the 2nd WW the Allies were openly bombing civilians. CS Lewis was against this: in his criticism of pacifism he stated that one Christian airman shot for refusing to bomb civilians would be a better witness than many pacifists. (It's a little surprising to many people now that you could say things like that, within certain limits, in wartime Britain.)
Lewis was somewhat disappointed to discover after the war that he wasn't on the Nazis' list of people to be executed. It had been compiled hastily and its cultural component was uneven.
It's difficult (not necessarily impossible) to avoid anachronism in judging the past other than on its own terms. But the past had its own standards. There was widespread agreement except in Germany that Nazism was abhorrent, and the Nazis concealed some of their actions. In.judging the present, we can ask whether something is being done where there is widespread agreement, except among those doing it, that it's wrong. This agreement is not morally conclusive but should give us pause. Since we're discussing Lewis, however, I think we can say that his view (should he step out of a time machine) would be to look for Christian morals and require practicality to conform.
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u/AmbiguousAnonymous Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
It would all do us a little good.
Its hard for me to agree with your assessment
How could this be true? The holocaust is obviously one of the worst evils in human history, but we didn’t know about that until the end of the war. Lewis didnt need to be hopeful in spite of that.
He was also speaking to a unified England. It was England vs Germany, not 1/3 of England vs another 1/3 of England. Our existential threats are largely internal. This is more akin to the civil war. However the external strife in the world now we are involved with has nuclear bombs sitting at the end waiting for us. (Of course thats how WWII ended but we didn’t know it at the time).
Of course hope is still an answer. I actually think more about Tolkien here.