Good is about an ordinary, almost nebbishy guy, John Halder, who is living his life with its ordinary pressures and who rationalizes, excusing himself each time he does not make a good choice. He wrote a novel about euthanasia some years back because his mother’s creeping dementia is gumming up his life. He is a professor and just going along without much recognition. Suddenly he gets attention from Nazis who want validation for their gassing damaged children, The Nazis want to “cleanse” German civilization from these damaged people. They invite the professor to a cocktail party because of his “interest” in euthanasia. He has no desire to mix with these people and his book was merely a temporary fling for him to let off steam because of his problems with his mother, but you do not refuse an invitation from the Nazis so he goes.
The play consists of Halder talking to the audience as he logically relates what is going on and why he is making his choices. In the original version the audience listens and feels the logic of each choice.
There is a new version of Good from The National Theatre of London, playing in theaters. I dislike this version because I believe it has too many distractions that sabotage the play. I won’t go into that here because I have other fish to fry.But I will point out that there is an important line in the first act that was swallowed in this version, almost not hearable. Describing the cocktail party and how it felt to have these impressive people notice him, Halder says, “And when they love you like THAT, how can you not love them back?” I remembered that line from the original version even though I saw the play over forty years ago.
At the end of Good when I saw it in 1982, each of us in the audience was Halder. It was terrifying.
My guess is that liberals seeing this play today would not be able to take Halder’s journey as he became a Nazi because if they did, they would have to recognize that there is a potential for evil in each of us. liberals would allow themselves to be distracted by saying John Halder was not a good person and find fault with how mean he is to his mother. Thus if he isn’t a good person, that lets the liberal off the hook because If you don’t think he is an ordinary good person, then the crimes are what HE did and have nothing to do with the liberal who is watching the play. I speak from experience with liberals. They don’t like to think that THEY could ever do bad things. I know we must each understand we ALL have the potential for evil. It is the best way to do our darndest not to commit evil.
A liberal might blame the playwright for being confusing. That could also interrupt his having to go on Halder’s journey in the play. I speak from experience. If I try to have a debate with a liberal, it is impossible. He will say I am confusing. He will distract, or deny; liberals simply do not know how to debate. Something is true because liberals have heard it repeated thousands of times and therefore there can be no argument against it. And another thing cannot be true because the liberal never heard anything about that.
The thing that is fascinating to me is that liberals probably watch this play and see people like me as the problem because we do not see the dangers of losing abortion rights or we refuse to understand the warnings of global climate change. To a liberal whatever it takes to correct that is fine with him even if it means giving up Americans’ marvelous way of life and our liberty. A liberal cannot allow the play to work on him because he is busy rationalizing why HE could never do what Halder did. I don’t believe most liberals are able to take his journey for reasons like that. It did seem to me that when I saw this play in 1982, the entire audience was devastated because it was so easy to forget oneself and become Halder. I believe this could not happen as easily today. And anyway, this production has too many distractions and over explained things and it sabotages our ability to identify with Halder. (Maybe the director this time is a liberal.)
When we walked out of the theater that day in 1982, we were devastated. Afterward we recognized that It is easy to seduce people into fearing and worrying about the wrong things, and ignoring what is really going on. The way tyranny creeps in is people allow it to.
First you are persuaded that believing in certain things make you feel superior and in the swim. And then you fight for these things and easily becoming part of the tyranny, rationalizing all the way so you do not become the victim but the participant in the tyranny.
On many occasions I have sat at a table where I was the lone conservative and the rest were liberals, good people all. For example recently at a table with three liberal friends, they all agreed out of the blue that the economy was doing great. First of all they each have enough money and thus they are not burdened by high prices because they can afford whatever anything costs. That makes them indifferent to the sufferings of more than half of America. They are all “Good” people who drink the Kool Aid and believe Biden when he assures us that the economy is doing very well. It saddened me that they have no self knowledge that their indifference to the sufferings of fellow Americans is part of the beginning of the end of liberty for us all. For example, Liberals’ obsessions with abortions rights and global climate change, or whatever they are calling it these days, are paramount to them. That distracts them from worrying about communist tyranny taking over, or corruption in the Biden family, or the weaponizing of the Justice Department against conservatives. To liberals, good people all, the big lie repeated non stop makes Trump today’s Jew. And good Americans are easily persuaded that Trump deserves anything he gets. Slippery slope. And lack of self recognition makes it hard to see.
John Halder lives.
The Universal Spectator 
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