Ludicrous Moral Equivalence

One of my early Christmas presents was a copy of the “new” Heinlein novel, “For Us, The Living”. For those unaware of it, it was Heinlein’s first novel, predating his first published work (“Lifeline”) and never before published.

I was a bit dismayed to see that Spider Robinson had written an introduction to the story. It would take a lot more than his name on the dustjacket to discourage me from reading a new Heinlein book, however, so I just planned to ignore the intro. Unfortunately, curiosity got the better of me and I read it anyway.

It wasn’t as bad as I had expected, consisting mostly of extravagant purple prose praises to “the Master” that I suspect he would have found rather undignified. Embarrassing, but harmless.

But near the end of the intro, Robinson drops in a contrived “slip of the pen” wisecrack, which I think is offensive, out of place, and wildly inaccurate.

The wisecrack comes in a discussion of the future history elements of the book, which foreshadow what became the famous Future History. In listing the elements which reappear in later, published works, he ticks off

“the pseudospirituality of the loathsome Nehemiah Cheney — excuse me, Scudder”.

If you are unfamiliar with the Future History, Nehemiah Scudder was a evangelical preacher who rose to political power in the late 21st Century, plunging America into a brutal theocratic tyranny, as recounted in the novella “If This Goes On…”. And for those of you who already know about Nehemiah Scudder from “If This Goes On…” and other Future History works but haven’t yet read “For Us, The Living”, the comparison is worse than it sounds. In discussing the rise of Scudder, Heinlein here states:

“…He organized the Knights of the New Crusade to implement him for Armageddon. This organization was modeled in nearly every respect after the Ku Klux Klan of the previous century, even to many details of ritual, uniform and constitution, which Brother Nehemiah had not bothered to change.”

So, in an apparent attempt to be witty and topical, Spider Robinson is comparing Dick Cheney to a fictional character in a class with Hitler and Stalin, who bases his supposedly Christian movement on a band of racist thugs.

As offensive as that is, it’s also puzzling. Why make this particular comparison? I’ve never seen Dick Cheney as the fire-and-brimstone fascist type, attempting to use the power of his elected position to dispose of the Constitution and impose a new order, in which evangelical Christians preside over a Dark Age tyranny eerily reminiscent of shariah.

I’ve grown inured to such persecution fantasies being directed at John Ashcroft, so had Robinson instead made a wisecrack about “Nehemiah Ashcroft”, I probably would have brushed it off as just another unremarkable example of moonbattery. But to make such an ugly comment about Dick Cheney seems way off-base and uncalled for, and I fail to see what his motivation might be.

UPDATE: Seems a few others are expressing the same meme.