A few years ago (the kids were still in school and we were living in
Virginia) I met one of the most notorious traitors in our history--Robert Hannssen. I didn't talk to him or anything, just shook his hand and nodded, he smiled-- we met very briefly at a function given by my son's school. He probably wouldn't remember me at all. But I got a good look at his face, and I was kind of interested because I'd heard he was in the FBI. Years later when his treachery was exposed, his face was all over the papers, and I noticed the same thing I had noticed when I had met him. He looked weak and afraid. Uncertain, would be a good way of describing it. Uncertain to a degree I'd never thought possible. I read a few books and articles about him, and saw the movie. The most puzzling thing was, here was a picture of someone I should, in all honesty, really hate. But when I looked at his picture it alwayw seemed like it was a picture of nobody--there was no one inside that face, behind those empty, scared eyes. I neither hated him nor pitied him. I was merely very puzzled.
Of course I have had more time to think about traitors, and broken vows, since then, and on a more intimate level. I think now that really, if you want to see the absolute essence of treachery, look at Robert Hanssen's photograph. A traitor breaks things--vows, commandments, rules, promises--and a traitor has no loyalty but to himself. He is, in a way, in a universe of laws he has created himself. You can't choose which of the Decalogue you will follow and which you won't--it doesn't work that way. You break one, you broke 'em all. They weave the universe together into one, and they are inseperable. So a traitor betrays everything permanent and unchanging in his world--the rules we ought to live by. But he's still alive, you know, and has to live by a set of standards even if they aren't consistent, or real, or make any sense. Otherwise, without even an illusion of consistency, we would all go mad. Because of cause and effect, you see. Things like that. Actions having consequences.
So imagine you're a traitor, like Robert Hanssen, going to work, eating dinner with his family every night, church on Sundays--all of that stuff he has to do in addition to being a traitor and getting American agents killed. How do you do it? What code do you live by? Since his sin is deliberate and calculated (one assumes) he must have some rationalization he makes when he feels the need to justify himself to his own conscience. And he can't use the ready-made Ten Commandments because he broke those already. So he does what everyone who lives a lie has to do--he makes his own rules as he goes. That, I think, is why he looks so scared. Imagine you had to create your own moral code all the time--and the only one you could compare it to is the Natural Law. Would you even try? Probably not unless you were a pompous, syphilitic 19th century German philosopher, a man I like to call "The favorite philosopher of teenage boys..."
Of course I don't claim to know the state of Robert Hanssen's soul, or anyone else's for that matter. But know a traitor or two, and courage does not seem to be their most prominent characteristic at the moment. Defiance doesn't last forever. Reality bites back. As it should, when one tries to reinvent the universe in order to gratify some obscure psychological quirk, (as in the case of Hanssen) or worse, one's lust and grandiosity. I have suffered from others' betrayal--and that happens, that's life. But God help anyone who makes my children suffer for the sake of their own lust. God help them. I won't.
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