Is History Subversive?
Back at old History Central again. Last month I wrote about Chamberlain’s extra-bad gamble of trying to appease Hitler, and Churchill’s wondering if the free world would survive, or even deserved to survive, if there was no courage anywhere to stand against the obvious and hideous evil. The appeasement gambit played a role in, as you may remember, kicking off World War II.
This time, we are talking about people who like the idea of taking over the world, and who enjoy figuring out nefarious ways to do it. It’s pretty much the central good-vs-evil plotline of every dystopian movie and cautionary tale, a good percentage of every spy novel, YA, and sci-fi yarn you can think of. And, of course, it seems to dominate the pages of most history books. I guess all those writers and movie producers like the trope because it’s a ubiquitous urge, apparently, and seems to have a lot of appeal to readers, moviegoers, etc. Yet the thought of it seems laughable to me; the thought of being the boss of everybody is too absurd to bear, and democracy has a lot more going for it, in my book. But no, taking over the world has a long list of aggressive aspirants, no matter that it especially surprises people like me who just want everybody in the world to have a good and fair and free life. It’s shocking every time it’s born out in reality, every time the brutality it calls for shows up.
“They” say power corrupts and absolute power absolutely does, which seems to be the case, if you look at the past, sans rose-colored spectacles. If you look at ruthless proponents of a take-over-the-world mindset like Napoleon, Putin, Hitler, Jim Jones, Mussolini, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Big Brother, and a whole passel of others of their ilk, you see that they are so intent on carrying out their goal to have power over people that they don’t give a hoot about what it costs, whom they lie to, nor whom they cause to get hurt, ruined, or dead. That’s why the framers of the Constitution put in what they hoped would be failsafe obstacles to the baser instincts of future leaders. They devised three branches of government that would pull back on the reins when the power of one branch threatened to get out of hand. They put in checks and balances so that a single person would not be able to get the upper hand over the will of the people. They made sure (they thought) that the Will of The People would be followed because the idea was that The People are the boss of this country and the government officials that The People hire (vote into power) must answer to that boss (us). Somehow, the fail safes seem to be failing, and we are in the midst of a boondoggle of some kind of unimaginably speedy freefall. In the lyrics to the 1988 song “The Cult of Personality,” the brilliant band Living Color makes explicit the requirements of this mindset and the acquiescence necessary from followers: I exploit you, still you love me / I tell you one and one makes three / I’m the cult of personality // You gave me fortune, you gave me fame / You gave me power in your God’s name / I’m every person you need to be / Oh, I’m the cult of personality! Bing Videos
What interests me a lot is what is it that makes people have that impulse and what in them magnetizes others to follow them and do their bidding, no matter if it is even contrary to their own best interests, even their own moral convictions? And what happens in a person’s formative years that could lead to such an urgent need to have power over other people and not care one bit how many people must suffer so that he (usually it’s a he) can have his way?
The damaging qualities of this megalomania seem to be exemplified in this quote from the novel, Lord Hornblower, written by C.S. Forester in 1946. Horatio Hornblower is a fictional British sea captain who has been fighting in naval battles against Napoleon for his entire career. He is completely exhausted by the endless war: “To Hornblower in his present despairing mood it seemed as if the struggle must continue until every last man in Europe was dead, until the whole of England’s substance was irrecoverably consumed; and, for himself, that until old age should set him free he would be condemned, on account of the mad determination of one single man, to the loss of his liberty, to spending his days and his nights in hideous surroundings like the present…” [italics mine.]
What wakes people up to tyranny before it’s too late to turn the tide? At what point do things turn into such an emergency that, if refutation of the tyrant does not occur, it’s Doomsville for people who want a nice life for themselves and everybody else? At what point does rope-a-dope pan out to be nothing more than hopes and prayers, and at what point must action be taken—and what does that action look like? Really.
