We will never know what happened between Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the maid in his hotel room. What, if anything, did Herman Cain say or do to the women who accused him of sexual harassment? What are Putin and Hu and Ahmadinejad planning? Until this week, how many knew the U.S. has drone bases in the Seychelles?
Secrecy generates suspicion, but there’s no need for conspiracy theories. Politics is opaque because humans are opaque. In what Oliver O’Donovan calls an “electrifying” passage in Book XIX of The City of God, Augustine catalogues the “great ills” that result from our habits and institutions of mutual concealment. “Injuries, suspicions, hostilities” arise even among “friends whose love is honorable.” Treachery can hide behind “a pretense of duty” or “the name of kinship.” Because of language barriers, we can barely communicate even if we want to, and the imposition of a lingua franca only creates new opportunities for conflict.
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