When it comes to revenge, truth is stranger than fiction, says Erik Spiekermann
And we all thought the new American-based drama House of Cards was fiction... Well let’s look at what happened for real when alleged retaliation got out of hand in New York, says Erik Spiekermann. Erik Spiekermann set up MetaDesign and FontShop, and is a teacher, author, designer and partner at Edenspiekermann
When politician Frank Underwood doesn't get the job of secretary of state, which the president had promised him, he decides to retaliate. This is the plot behind the US TV drama House of Cards. Whatever Underwood does from now on (and he does not even shy away from committing murder), is done to punish the president more than to fulfil his own ambitions.
This impulse to get even for a perceived wrong-doing seems a deep-rooted instinct. It may not be rational, but it is emotionally satisfying.
Whether it is the biblical eye for an eye, or some other ethical reason, we tend to subscribe to the idea that people shouldn't get away with the irresponsible or morally unacceptable, let alone criminality. At least punishing, even without making good on the results of the original crime, seems to be necessary and thus satisfying for many of us. But there are differences between retaliation, revenge and retribution, not to mention vengeance.
Judy Lichtenberg, a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland and author of an article called The Ethics of Retaliation, writes about how President Bush vowed to retaliate against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. The American public shared his outrage and did not question the moral argument for retribution. They think, Lichtenberg writes, that 'it is inherently wrong for people to get away with murder and that we must serve justice by giving people what they deserve'. A danger is that the punishment may exceed the crime. The defenders of retribution distinguish between revenge and vengeance. When the punishment fits the crime, emotionally based revenge and vengeance will have been kept at bay.
The waiter spitting into the soup of an obnoxious customer is an example of retribution being satisfying, even when the other person doesn't know about it. He needed to get it out of his system, although it will have no effect on the customer's future behaviour. What makes revenge or retribution even sweeter is when the perpetrator and you know about it, but no-one else does. To make this work, you would have to stay within the world of observable but not verifiable accounts -- this means leave no evidence behind; so your opponents would understand what you've done, but nothing could found that you could be punished for. Getting away with it without paying a price.
This is, of course, how politicians like Frank Underwood need to work, lest they spoil their chances of staying in the game. If someone else were to find out about it, their deeds done in retaliation may not look so morally correct.
Unlike the waiter example, retaliation in politics may serve another purpose: to prevent the same action happening again. Another example from American politics (one from real life this time) shows that people do not behave rationally, not even when they are closely watched by the press.
It is alleged that New Jersey governor Chris Christie's aides and his appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey retaliated against the Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich for not backing Christie's reelection, by pretty much blocking traffic between Manhattan and Fort Lee for a few days by closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge that connects the two places.
The premise was wrong from the start. If the whole backstory hadn't come out, Sokolich might have never known that the traffic jams were the result of a conspiracy to get back at him. It could have just been another administrative blunder, something this part of the US experiences all the time. But the way they went about it could only have two outcomes: a big traffic jam that harmed a lot of commuters but not Fort Lee's mayor, as he is not responsible for work on the bridge; and a major scandal, followed by other revelations about Christie's politics, thus possibly ending his hopes for the presidential race.
As the Christie camp surely didn't want anybody to find out about this they should have been working under the premise of observable but not verifiable facts. Perhaps Fort Lee's mayor would eventually have figured out that the traffic jams were designed to revenge something he might have done against Christie, or simply to show him who was in charge. Regardless, it was badly done.
Soon enough, a trail of emails was discovered by journalists who couldn't understand why the governor's administration would make New Jersey commuters suffer for some petty reason.
We'll have to wait until Season 3 to find out whether Frank Underwood's plan to revenge a personal insult will result in a major catastrophe. Only in the world of fiction, of course. But as we know, truth can often be stranger than fiction. By giving in to that impulse to get even, regardless of consequences, the most powerful politicians have shown just how human they are. It's something we'd rather not know.
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