"No," Father said, "The Yankees are not evil, no more than a germ is evil, or a tornado. Things like these are creations of nature. They only follow the constraints of that nature and can never hope to do otherwise, can never hope at all. That nature may have evil results, may destroy those things we deem good, but it is not itself evil. It only is."
Father took a small sip from the tumbler, his gaze focused somewhere on the horizon beyond our heads. "Because evil is a human construct, and tornados and germs and Yankees are not human. Perhaps these Yankees were human at one time, but to a man they surrendered all claim on humanity the instant they paid their busfare and lit out for the Bronx. Now they are little more than automatons, an unfeeling fleet of pinstriped golems laboring without thought or joy or even ambition, prevailing inevitably because that is what they do and why they are."
He sat then, folding into the worn leather armchair with a weariness we had never seen before. "There is no shame in losing to these Yankees," he murmured. "Just as there is no thrill in winning for these Yankees. They will continue, insensate and unblinking, and we will stand in the shallows, steel-jawed and buoyed by false bravado, like beachcombers trapped in a cove, praying into an indifferent void that maybe this will be the one time among millions when the rip tide ebbs before reaching the shore but knowing in our hearts that our drowning is imminent. And in the end our only comfort may be that no matter how many glories they reap, they will glean no enjoyment, no fulfillment, because again these feelings, all feelings, are the domain of a humanity that is no more than a vague shimmer of memory for these Yankees."
"No," Father said, "The Yankees are not evil, but they are damned. They are damned." And Father was weeping now, but when we looked in his eyes we saw no trace of sorrow.
- Ira Brooker
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