Desperate for an enemy
But too afraid to kill
Use the pain of someone else
And triumph for their will
And spill the blood
Of the arrogant mosquitoes
A few weeks ago, I watched a uniquely American – that is, riveting and bizarrely larger than life – story of an intellectually disabled person being abused by people around him, who all believed it was for a good cause, while in effect, doing serious harm. If you were confused for a minute, I am not talking about the now defunct Biden presidential campaign, but about a Louis Theroux-produced documentary, “Tell Them You Love Me”, which hit the US Netflix in June and was released in the UK (available on Sky) earlier this year.
The film tells a genuinely extreme, lurid story, which, despite its excesses, perfectly encapsulates the spirit of our times: the spirit of sentimentalism. It follows the story of Derrick Johnson, a severely disabled man in his 30s whose life was changed when his ambitious brother introduced Anna Stubblefield to their lives.
Stubblefield, an activist-minded professor of ethics at a prestigious university, is the closest we get to the prototype of a heroine of our times. She is confident yet sensitive in her pursuit of justice and empowerment of the disadvantaged. She is educated, wielding her earned arcane expert knowledge for the benefit of a non-verbal Black man and his family. She is somebody who decided to have sex with her ward, which, after she decided to pressure his family, ended with her career and life ruined.
Going through the various twists and turns of the film would spoil it, and given my lack of talent for exposition, I would suggest you have it spoiled at least by somebody more talented—like Katie Herzog and Helen Lewis on a darkly funny episode of “Blocked and Report” dealing with the pseudoscience of facilitated communication. Stubblefield used this arcane, liberating knowledge to ascertain that she is the only person who needs to decide on the fate of her adoring ward.
What makes the documentary fascinating is its unwillingness to take sides between Stubblefield and the Johnsons, allowing the viewer to confront in themselves the consequences of taking a genuinely unscientific but profoundly sentimental view of reality, in which everybody is one step from being liberated from their predicaments. The extreme moral implications of bringing various worldviews make this a sobering watch. Suppose you believe the Johnsons that Derrick is genuinely incapable of consent. In that case, you can see Stubblefield’s behaviour, and to an extent even their attempts to portray Derrick as a savant locked into a broken body, as darkly abusive projections of narcissism.
Suppose you believe Stubblefield’s liberationist, albeit empirically unsubstantiated, view of the world. In that case, you see the Johnsons as captors of their son, who decided to medicate him rather than accept his development. As Herzog and Lewis noted, neither is something people could accept easily, leading both sides to resort to sentimental explanations of their shocking behaviour. However, by the nature of things, only one side of sentimentalism has some basis, as probably correctly adjudicated by the courts in this case.
The belief in the complete disconnect between what is done and preached, as long as it is for a good cause, and what is happening as a result of it is the defining feature of sentimentalism. In a lot of ways, sentimentalism is that way is the logical last step of liberalism, which works well to dissolve “repressive” structures but cannot positively ascertain anything (Nietzsche was not a fan). Sentimentalism fills that void in its belief in ultimate liberation from reality, focusing purely on intentions and wishes and refusing any responsibility for outcomes. In that way, it is purely false and self-serving, which, if you live in a society that rewards sentimentalism, gets compounded to the point where sentimentalists can abuse everyone in the cause of helping everyone.
One typical type of a victim/cause would be Oscar Wilde, who penned his De Profundis after serving time in Reading for sodomy. Of course, he had a thing or two to say about sentimentalism and emotion, and he wasn’t very fond of the sentimental types, which haven’t changed in more than a century (the “circulating library of thought part “is very genuine when you consider all the clicktivism):
“A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. The intellectual and emotional life of ordinary people is a very contemptible affair. Just as they borrow their ideas from a sort of circulating library of thought—-the Zeitgeist of an age that has no soul—-and send them back soiled at the end of each week, so they always try to get their emotions on credit, and refuse to pay the bill when it comes in. You should pass out of that conception of life. As soon as you have to pay for an emotion you will know its quality, and be the better for such knowledge. And remember that the sentimentalist is always a cynic at heart. Indeed, sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism.”