Good and Evil

Two deaths recently occurred that I only today learned of. There are no absolutes, of course, but one of those who died was evil, the other good.

1) Evil
Yao Wenyuan -- Evil Son Of A Bitch; member of the Chinese Group of Four; credited with starting the Cultural Revolution. Died of diabetes, aged 74.

I was amazed this guy was still alive, but turns out he was the baby of the Group. He was, not surprisingly perhaps if one thinks of Nazi Germany, the Group's propagandist. (My profession has such opportunity for evil.) An article he wrote denouncing a play, about an ancient Chinese emperor, written by the deputy mayor of Beijing (a play originally prompted and sanctioned by Mao himself, but seen by Wenyuan as intellectual sneakery that covertly questioned Mao's rule) was later described by Mao as the launching point of the Cultural Revolution.

He was jailed for 20 years after Mao's death following the famous trial. Silly, really, if you consider how cheap life can be in China with its record of executions for things far less serious than being a mastermind of the Cultural Revolution, one of the most systematic dismantlings of any society; one in which millions died and tens of millions knew unthinkable conditions.

2) Good
Hugh Thompson Jr. -- Hero (in the real sense of the word) of the My Lai masacre; Vietnam U.S. Helicopter pilot; human. Died of cancer, age 62.

Mr. Thompson set his helicopter down between American troops shooting their guns at fleeing civilians and those civilians after flying into the middle of what we now know as the My Lai masacre. He and his crew then turned their guns at their fellow soldiers and ordered the shooting to stop. He also helped pull survivors(including children) out of a ditch where civilians had been marched before being shot. Three times Mr. Thompson had set his chopper down to report to "friendly forces" on the whereabouts of civilian Vietnamese in need of help only to take off and see his information used to find and exterminate the civilians. From testimony he gave:

We saw another lady that was wounded. We got on the radio and called for some help and marked her with smoke. A few minutes later up walks a captain, steps up to her, nudges her with his foot, steps back and blows her away.

We came across a ditch that had, I don't know, a lot of bodies in it, a lot of movement in it. I landed, asked a sergeant there if he could help them out, these wounded people down there. He said he'd help them out, help them out of their misery, I believe. I was . . . shocked, I guess, I don't know. I thought he was joking; I took it as a joke, I guess. We took off and broke away from them and my gunner, I guess it was, said, "My God, he's firing into the ditch."

He was, of course, called unpatriotic -- a congressman once said he should be the only serviceman punished for My Lai.

I think the real description of the man is summed up by Author Seymour Hersh (who won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for book on the massacre in 1969).

Said Hersh: "[Thompson was]one of the good guys. You can't imagine what courage it took to do what he did."