Water-fronting streetscapes like these had a certain sober charm which – since they have not been replaced en masse in the name of ‘progress’ – presumably reflects something of the Netherland’s national character. Though both Amsterdam and Venice are water-oriented, this Dutch town looked immeasurably tidier and more efficient than its Italian analogue (which I also visited for the first time on that 2016 European excursion). Unlike Venice’s seemingly random pattern of jagged canals and short, narrow streets unsuitable for motorized traffic, central Amsterdam has a carefully planned concentric layout.
And the desire for order of the city’s Golden Age proto-merchant culture is also suggested by the still-prevalent building stock visible here: Hundreds of narrow, 4 to 6 story-high residential structures, presumably built or owned largely out of profits from Dutch international trade or its domestic support enterprises. These structures appeared to be substantial but unpretentious, and evidently the fruit of careful investment. In contrast, older residential buildings in Venice did not give that impression.
That difference also represents a seismic shift in social priorities. Whereas most of Venice’s notable buildings seemed to be governmental, the palazzi of local nobility or religious properties, the multi-story blocks in which ordinary Venetians apparently lived along narrow pedestrian streets, in the era of the city’s zenith (several centuries before Amsterdam’s prominence) looked to be fairly non-descript, utilitarian – even a bit shabby, vertical hovels – shelter for the urban masses.
By contrast, the housing stock of Amsterdam presented solidity and order, not just crude abodes expeditiously thrown up. Looking at those rows of sturdy townhouses, one can perceive harbingers of a wealth-spreading, business-oriented society – not just a sprinkle of scattered elegance, based on restricted control of resources amid semi-squalor, typical of pre-Modern urbanism – that would continue to evolve, and help drive an interconnected world economy as it grew and prospered.
For example, the canal-side roadways visible here were likely originally built to facilitate moving commercial goods from water craft to markets in town, or beyond. Later they were adaptable to use for auto traffic and parking, whereas Venice’s haphazard layout precluded such re-purposing. Today, Amsterdam is still a locus of progress and evolution in civilization and economics, whereas Venice – a town tied to the Mediterranean as the world’s center of gravity, so then bypassed by oceanic exploration – has proven, physically and spiritually, far less ‘adaptable’ to change. Venice now mainly survives as a tourist destination, offering visitors evidence of its past glories. Reflect on that comparison, if/as you may.
The Dutch Republic was not democratic as Americans in the 21st Century might think of that word, but unlike almost all the rest of Europe, it was no longer wholly class-bound, either (as Venice, though also nominally a Republic, remained). Netherlanders then had less a “station” in life than a “standing,” which one could improve by personal determination and exertion; efforts that the ‘proto-merchant culture’ encouraged, and rewarded.
CONTEXT: I am currently nurturing some large writing projects, including an ambitious one for this blog. But rather than cease posting here till that is ready, I am going to re-post a few more items from my 2016 trip to Europe, starting with this one from Amsterdam. These will be relatively short, dealing mostly with substantial, not largely abstract themes. They are chosen in hopes they may provide context about places or events that inquisitive people might savor.
‘Exotic’ is a relative, subjective term. I live in Chicago, which seems comfortably familiar to me, but to someone from London, Moscow, Tokyo, Lima, Lagos, etc., my hometown may well seem ‘exotic’ – just as theirs would to me. For example, I was delighted when a group of visiting Parisians once told me they found Chicago – with its parapet of Skyscrapers and much of the best modern architecture anywhere sitting on the shore of glittering, opalescent Lake Michigan – ‘spectaculaire.’ They knew of nowhere in Europe where such stupendous works of Man abut such an auspicious natural setting.
I am very fond of my city and while I never considered it prosaic, it was a revelation to hear the impression it can make on people seeing it for the first time. So please consider: Might that also be true of wherever you live? Could there be things there you take for granted that would delight, even amaze, a newcomer? Paris’ inhabitants have appeared to me to be almost indifferent to their surroundings, even though those include some of the most elegant streets and structures in the world.
So while familiarity may breed indifference, never forget that our Earth is full of wonders and marvels, human and natural – or maybe denying easy categorization. Not all of them are ‘show-stoppers’ like Chicago’s rampart of cloudbusters, but many of them may be ‘breath takers’ anyway. And some of them may be in your life every day. So be attentive to the possibility of ‘wonders and marvels’ around you.
To start this interim series, something very cute from a museum in Amsterdam. By the way; ‘Brazilie’ is the Dutch name for ‘Brazil,’ where they once had colonies.
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, in addition to artworks at the level of Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch,’ was full of varied, whimsical items gathered globally, to remind the Dutch of the giant shadow their little land cast in its era of outsized, multifaceted achievement in the late 17th – early 18th centuries, when their ancestors sailed forth to explore, and exploit, vast reaches of the world. Its collection echoes a culture of openness to outside influence, upon which their culture apparently continues to evolve. This stuffed toy looked like an anteater, though I’m not sure (the Museum was closing as I dashed through its store, where this was displayed; no time to investigate). Such things don’t usually attract me, but now I wish I had bought this. It was a real novelty, and as you may agree, very cute.
Today’s Dutch people are reputed to be irreverent, resistant to pomposity and rote convention; very different from the severe character of their thrifty, Bible-guided forebears in their Golden Age – and possibly a logical development of their society’s drift away from rigid, approved behavioral codes. This is also reflected in their moral flexibility and live-and-let-live attitudes, demonstrated by the adult pleasures on show in Amsterdam.
It is also reflected in their attitude towards the Rijksmuseum itself. Although it contains some of the greatest creative treasures in the world, it did not seem like some set-apart temple of high culture, revered as a semi-sacred space and treated with hushed decorum. Instead, the Rijks felt more like an active part of contemporary Dutch identity. In fact, it is literally implanted in the everyday experience of Amsterdam, because a heavily used bike lane runs at street level between its wings. Such a synergy may say as much about the Netherlands of today as the displays inside the museum say about its Golden past.
It seems good the Rijks is part of dynamic communal life rather than an inviolate temple to be venerated at a worshipful remove. Great art requires concentration to create, or fully appreciate; but not necessarily humble reverence, for its energy to spread and affect a broader community. And that is surely true for sensations from the natural world around us, too.
CONTEXT: I first put this piece online in late October 2022, prompted by dark Kremlin hints then of using nuclear weapons pre-emptively before Ukrainian ‘terrorists’ did so first. Now threats of escalation are coming from that quarter again, on the pretext that Russia – waxing indignant that what it routinely does to the neighbor it invaded might now be done to it – is being attacked by (alleged) Ukrainian drones. So far, this has been on a minuscule scale, compared to the Russian V2-like weapons unleashed on non-military targets in Kyiv, etc.
The sacrifice of many thousands of Russian troops so far in Putin’s Special Military Operation (which he assumed would be easy – as Hitler did, of his invasion of the USSR) should prove that he sees his own people as mere tools, expendable for greater goals. Like the goal of appeasing his own gross pride at the loss of lands and peoples from Russian control at the fall of the USSR. So it wouldn’t be a surprise if he was behind bombings in 1999 which killed mere dozens. Nor would it be implausible if the current drone strikes are actually engineered by his regime now, as an excuse to unleash more and greater violence on its innocent neighbor-victim.
However: a wise friend suggested that instead of focusing my fury on Putin (as I have elsewhere), I take the broader perspective of Prince Andrei in ‘War and Peace’: That is, we suppose Great Men, like Napoleon, ‘lead’ history, but in fact they really follow it, by embodying the spirit of their times. A fair observation; Putin is likely merely the point of a spear of pre-modernRussian culture, which continues to allow him and kindred scoundrels to slash their way to the top of society. A culture that assumes brute force and brutish self-interest will always prevail in the human world.
But Ukraine is frustrating that assumption. Its valor, combined with the efficiency of NATO military hardware, organizational advice, intelligence – that is, every advantage of societies whose people are free to reach and harness their full potential, not be mindless slaves of the ruthless and powerful – are helping to show that Dark Age attitudes like those of Russia’s past and present rulers are not apt to ‘prevail’ in modernity (again, as Hitler also learned).
A hidebound cynic like Putin can neither accept nor grasp that, so the Free World needs to keep demonstrating it till this Mongol-inspired Muscovy mindset is conclusively bested by humane, righteous rationality. If not stopped, Putin and the whole awful ‘spirit’ he currently personifies, may inflict, on their own Motherland, the very destruction they insist the West is trying to achieve. That is, cause the dissolution of the Russian nation. And that, given how many times Russians have shownsuch great gifts as a people – when allowed to – would be a tragedy not just for them, but for the world.
A chilling reminder of some grim history, possibly relevant again: Vladimir Putin eventually achieved absolute power in Russia, arising directly from the terror bombing of several apartment buildings in Moscow (shown in the picture above, with a separate, explanatory article) and other Russian cities in 1999. Those crimes were cast as the work of Chechen terrorists, during a combat lull between Russia and its rebellious breakaway Muslim province, Chechnya.
But this ghastly episode may echo today, in 2022, in Russian hints that Ukrainians are planning nuclear terrorism.
Putin, having back then been recently named successor to the tragicomic Russian President and buffoon-in-chief Boris Yeltsin, used those bombings – which collapsed mid-rise civilian residential buildings at night, killing scores of sleeping innocents – as a pretext to restart the war against Chechnya. That led to an orgy of atrocities on both sides, with a bloody, poisoned ‘peace’ eventually won by Moscow.
But it has long been suspected – almost assumed – that those bombings were carried out by the secret police with Putin’s permission, if not his outright instigation, intending to blame the Chechens. That would serve as a motive to reignite the war against them, while also showing Russians they needed a strong leader like him to protect them. And given how he then pulverized the slumbering Chechen insurgency, it seems the worldview of those who gain power in Russia cannot tolerate not crushing any foe to dust.
(And there goes that Russian rulers’ ‘tick’ again, of being just fine with sacrificing the lives of their common people – ‘little cogs,’ as Stalin called them – for a supposedly greater good; like their gaining, or staying in power.)
I don’t speak Russian, but almost wonder if the language even has a word for ‘credibility,’ the idea that one’s past actions entitle one to be believed or trusted – or not – or if that idea even exists in a Russian context. Because the official story of Chechen culpability for the 1999 bombings may be just one of a long, sordid history of barely plausible lies told by rulers at the Center of Russian power, the Kremlin. For example, in 1946, they asserted that, after the Red Army drove the Nazis out of Eastern European nations the Germans had overrun, those nations pleaded for the Soviets to stay – ‘to defend us from Capitalism.’ They were supposedly happy to go from German to Russian slavery; that’s about probable as it sounds.
Either the Kremlinites are so contemptuous of common folk (and not just in Russia) that they assume such drudges will believe whatever Authority tells them, no matter how transparently unlikely it seems – like Chechens supposedly believing wholesale massacre of innocent civilians might help win their freedom – or so cynical they don’t care whether their fabrications are convincing or not.
(The Nazis contrived a ‘false flag’ operation as a rationale for invading Poland in 1939, ‘Operation Canned Goods.’ They took some habitual criminals from German prisons, dressed them in Polish army uniforms, shot them, then left their bodies near a border radio transmitter as ‘proof’ of a Polish incursion into Germany – justifying the huge, long-planned Nazi attack on Poland a few hours later. Hitler had told his generals ‘I will provide a pretext for war; never mind if it is plausible or not.’ And so very possibly Putin too, with the Moscow bombings, then Chechen bloodbath; Vultures of a feather flock together, it seems.)
I raise this ancient history now because of the ominous news that the Russians – who are the ones acting like rampaging, school/mall/hospital/infrastructure-targeting Nazis, not the phantom Fascists whom Putin tells his credulous base he is attacking their peaceful neighbor to destroy – say Ukraine is preparing a dirty nuclear bomb to spew radioactivity on Russian troops; or to sabotage a vast nuclear plant on occupied Ukrainian land. So now if such things happen, he’ll blame them on Kyiv as an excuse for committing worse war crimes than he has already.
Putin appears to have drifted into a surreal state of detachment from reality, a delusional brew of irresponsible indifference to potential calamity. Apparently, in his megalomania, nothing matters more than that his criminally conceived, ill-planned, and ludicrously executed aggression should not fail miserably. And he may stop at nothing to avoid that humiliating outcome. Or at least make the world pay for his frustration.
This is the sort of outlook and behavior alluded to in my March, 2022 FB post, ‘A Sustaining Folly,’ which was partly about how I feel the Russian people deserve far better rulers than they have historically gotten. But it takes epic personal courage to defy vicious, officially-empowered criminals like Putin and his ilk, prone to over-react to any resistance like the savages they are.
As to the echo of the ’99 residential bombings in terms of use of nuclear arms, rarely in my life have I hoped more fervently to be wrong. But if Putin suddenly asserts that ‘The Ukrainians plan to commit Nuclear Terrorism,’ – so Moscow can respond in kind, or worse – please recall those bombed Muscovites, slaughtered in their sleep.
You heard it here first: Putin may replay a trick that worked for him before, assuming no one remembers or cares. But some of us do, and indeed, must.
To conclude, this situation reminds me of an observation I’ve long held about the difference between human intelligence and actual wisdom: A species with the wisdom to wield nuclear weapons would have had the wisdom never to have created them. So God help All of us, that such power – and I don’t just mean atomic weapons – has found its way into the hands of a man like Putin.
‘The Glorious Revolution’ is the name usually given to the English ruling class’ overthrow of their King, James II, in 1688. It’s a complex story, but here’s a summary: At that time, most Englishmen were Protestant, and deeply suspicious that James, a convert to Catholicism, would try to make England a ‘Papist’ country again. To forestall that, a clique of the most powerful men in the realm persuaded William of Orange, leader of the Protestant Netherlands and husband of Mary Stuart – James’ Protestant daughter and first heir to his throne, after his young son – to sail, with Mary, to England to depose James, then become co-sovereigns.
This plan succeeded, virtually without bloodshed. When it became known that William and Mary were coming to claim his crown, James’ military command would not support him, nor would many of his most prominent subjects. With no army that would defend his hold on rule, James fled to France. The Presumptors arrived in England to widespread acclaim and approval, and were formally offered co-monarchy – contingent on their accepting several conditions including new, clear limits on their actual powers.
The royal couple agreed to those terms, and it was from this time that the executive supremacy of England’s Parliament over its Monarch began to irreversibly grow: The proto-version of the ‘Constitutional Monarchy’ of King Charles III’s impending coronation.
For in addition to its religious motives, the aim of 1688’s ‘palace coup’ was to preclude royal Absolutism as in France, whose King Louis XIV was virtual autocrat of his nation. England’s upper classes – indeed, most of society – wanted no such possible despotism, so henceforth their sovereign’s governance would be highly circumscribed, with more and more practical control gradually accruing to Parliament’s House of Commons (an elected body, but at the time, only male property-owners could vote). Eventually, the events of 1688 led to the successful version of Britain’s monarchy – with a King or Queen as nominal reporting authority and political backstop of last resort, but not day-to-day leader – that he, or she, is now.
It was indeed a ‘Glorious Revolution’ that such fundamental change happened with so little violent resistance, and led to a robust, durable socio-political framework. The nation’s ruling classes effectively ‘established’ themselves, not the monarch, as having supreme political jurisdiction. This would shift over generations, as literacy and economic influence became more widespread, to ‘majority rule’ with voting rights for virtually all adults.
But my title for this post, ‘Inglorious Revolution,’ alludes to a simmering suspicion regarding events some 250 years later, in 1936, which may still have implications for Charles III. The accompanying photo shows his great uncle, King Edward VIII, speaking into a radio microphone to deliver his abdication speech in that year, announcing to the world that he was giving up his throne to marry his twice-divorced American mistress, Wallis Warfield-Simpson.
At that time, as official head of the Church of England (Anglicanism), a British monarch was not allowed to wed a divorced person, but Edward made the monumental decision to yield his regal stature so he could make Wallis his wife. He was succeeded by his unprepared younger brother Albert as King George VI, father of the late Queen Elizabeth, and King Charles’ grandfather. After abdicating, Edward went into voluntary exile and duly married Wallis, but putting his personal happiness before the great office expected of him caused him to be largely ostracized by his family, disrespected by much of the British public, and to rarely set foot in the United Kingdom till his death in 1972.
Almost since he renounced the crown, there has been a drip of innuendo to suggest that Edward had not been fit to be King anyway. Beyond abandoning his responsibilities, which implied he had no sense of duty, after his abdication (but still before World War II) he and Wallis were public, ostentatious admirers of Nazism. It is suspected Hitler hoped to restore him to the throne and make Wallis Queen, if Germany conquered Britain in the war he was already planning. Worse, British Secret Service records hint that Edward was not unwilling to listen to such overtures from Hitler, an inexcusable disloyalty in one who had once personified his country. And after the War, he was involved in some base business deals that would have been rejected by any ‘man of honor.’
However: If Edward VIII didn’t have a sterling character, neither did many of his royal predecessors. For example, his grandfather King Edward VII had been so lascivious as Prince of Wales he was often referred to as ‘Dirty Bertie.’ And the reckless, tin-eared extravagance of George IV could well have ignited a French-style Revolution in Britain. Besides, many other blue-blooded Brits have famously acted anything but ‘noble.’ Edward’s position, and his antics with Wallis were so prominent and overt that, supposedly, they couldn’t just be discreetly overlooked; yet those of at least two ignoble Kings in the modern era had been.
While I have no reason to doubt that abdicating for personal romance was selfish and indifferent to consequences – upsetting society and threatening the exalted position he was born to hold (and source of all his privilege), the monarchy itself, that his affinity for Nazism, his petulance about his later treatment by his family and the British public, and his vulgar grasping for shady profit, etc. – are all true, there has also been indismissible evidence that his fall was ultimately due to something more than just his attachment to Mrs. Simpson.
It has been suggested that Edward’s insistence on marrying Wallis, a supposed deal-breaker that meant he absolutely could not remain King, could have been ‘finessed’ somehow. For example, Parliament might have devised some legal dispensation for him to marry his American divorcée, but instead, Wallis got used as a convenient pretext to get rid of him in as little unseemly a manner as possible.
In this interpretation, he actually was, in effect, deposed because his approach to kingly duties had alarmed some powerful domestic interests. His outlook, temperament and pleasure-seeking lifestyle were the opposite of those of his arch-respectable father/predecessor George V, and not only did he embrace far looser etiquette, he showed overt disdain, even contempt, for the petrified rituals of the royal court, much affronting Britain’s ruling caste.
But more crucially, as Prince of Wales during the early 1930’s – the Great Depression – and during his short reign after the death of his father early in 1936, Edward had been visible (and fairly candid) in suggesting that the government was not doing enough to help people who had lost their jobs, homes, or were otherwise still suffering in the aftermath of the economic turmoil.
Edward, who had always been rich and privileged, presumably had no idea of the intricacies of public financial and employment policy needed to provide such help. But he could see that many of his common people were enduring privation, while those who might have known how to fund social relief – the government, and especially the business community – didn’t want to raise taxes to aid their fellow citizens, or otherwise further complicate their own affairs at such a challenging time. So even if Edward wasn’t especially virtuous, in that instance he appeared to be aware of and empathic to the distress of his many suffering subjects.
Which was far more than could be said of many members of Britain’s higher social strata – both hereditary and ‘in trade’ – at the time. But for them, some of his public deeds and statements came too close to forbidden royal meddling in politics; and worse, to outright populism. His perceived ‘socialist’ sympathies made him a favorite of a great deal of the public, even when he was no longer King; and thus a lingering anxiety for Britain’s ‘Establishment’.
Much criticism rightly attaches to his later visits as a private citizen to Nazi Germany and personal meeting with Hitler. But the reality may be a bit more nuanced; one reason Edward (like a great many other people of all classes in Britain and elsewhere) felt Nazism couldn’t be all bad was because under it, Germany had virtually solved its unemployment problems, and generally appeared more efficient, dynamic and forward-looking than the Democracies, still struggling with the effects of the Depression. Besides, Hitler was a stout foe of Communism, which was then the primary nightmare of both middle class citizens, and the economic elite of the UK. (No doubt, including some of those who had contrived or approved of Edward’s downfall.)
I don’t know if the Duke of Windsor (the title Edward was given after abdicating) realized how much of the Third Reich’s prosperity was due to Hitler’s accelerating rearmament program in violation of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the Great War. In that, along with other public works programs, millions of unemployed Germans found jobs. Thus, if one averted one’s eyes from Nazism’s ghastly facets – especially its violence against Jews (if Edward was ‘anti-Semitic,’ like a great many Englishmen, it was likelier to be stodgy social bias than murderous hatred), but also its egocentric pro-Aryan racism, its overt preparations to plunge Europe into war again, and any number of other less visible criminal intents – it might indeed appear to be ‘successful’ in ways that Democracy, encumbered by elections, rule of law, respect for individual rights, the search for political consensus, etc. – did not.
Such obstacles are easily, if inconclusively, overcome in any nation run by a dictator unanswerable to elected representatives or the citizenry. At the time, Mussolini, head of Fascist Italy, also got a lot of admiration, like Hitler, as a ‘doer,’ rather than a ‘talker.’ (A grim lesson; if strength is all you value in a ruler, you will eventually get savagery, when strength alone cannot overcome the practical complexities of rule.)
In this version of events, the real reason the ‘Establishment’ decided Edward had to go was not so much about Wallis – though her being a flippant, irreverent divorced American was indeed a problem for many of them – as about the prospect of a charismatic, seemingly open-minded king, whose office and aura might give him standing to insert input into official policy. As far as such people were concerned, Constitutional monarchs were not supposed to draw attention to themselves by word or deed in ways that created difficulties for the government (or other influential parties). For them, Edward, possibly oblivious to the depth of antagonism he was provoking, presumably crossed a line to unacceptability. As to the politicians, they may have feared that much of the populace might start to look to a genuinely concerned king for guidance, rather than to Parliament, jeopardizing their monopoly on political dominance.
A Monarch of England has the legal rights and duties ‘to be consulted, to advise, and to warn’ the regime of the day, which nominally derive their legitimacy as His or Her government. But any trend to actually impact, if not control, public policy, was something many of those in whose interests the country was really being run were determined to prevent. Especially, one suspects, if it meant government interference in the pitiless functions of the Free Market, and re-distribution of wealth to rescue the less fortunate.
But the politicians, bluebloods and lucre-men dared not expose the real reason for their disapproval of Edward: As King, he would have a preeminent platform from which to chasten them to do more for their dispossessed fellowmen (though no right to command them to do so). And he had already shown that he might make use of that podium. Thus, the religious implications of his desire to marry ‘the woman I love’ were used as a less blunt guise to maneuver him out of the way (facilitated by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and the hidebound Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Lang).
Support and personal affection for Edward were apparently broadly felt among common Britons, so if this analysis of the forces that stealthily led to the loss of his crown is true, it was the most blatant case in modern times of the ruling class overriding the wishes of a vastly larger number of the ruled to get their preferred outcome: Edward gone, replaced on the throne by his pliable, tradition-loving younger brother as King George VI under a cynical aegis of ‘propriety.’ A tacitly, tastefully executed Coup d’état.
Let me make that clearer: The powerful got huffy that a King might violate the nation’s Democratic spirit by getting political – even as they, themselves, disregarded the apparent will of many, if not most Britons that Edward remain on the throne. So who was violating the supposedly sacrosanct ‘Democratic spirit’ more? A Sovereign who felt, and sometimes showed, actual concern for Britain’s downtrodden? Or its most comfortable, prosperous folk, invoking that spirit – while ignoring broader public opinion – because they didn’t want their yachts rocked? So much for the Establishment’s devotion to any Principle other than self-interest.
Events like the abdication frequently lack a ‘smoking gun,’ which makes definitive conclusions elusive. Thus, no one can know for sure if the forces noted above were truly decisive in forcing the issue, or were most or only some, part of it. I am no ardent apologist for Edward, who seems to have often acted, privately and publicly, like a clueless, spoiled teenager. Further, if he sincerely grasped how much hope ordinary people were putting in him – and had the character to put his duty to them first – he might have sacrificed his passion for Wallis and stayed King, so as to be a voice for his less fortunate subjects when they most needed one.
It may never be possible to assess for sure if this is why he was told he had to give up either Wallis or his crown – in the expectation/hopes that he would choose her – so that the ‘insiders’ would be rid of him and his incipient, ominous popularity. But if they were, the covert power-centers of the United Kingdom would likely have an interest, even today, in concealing whose wishes ‘matter’ and whose don’t, even as reminders of Edward’s genuine flaws are allowed to trickle out.
And it would have been the ‘Inglorious Revolution’ of my title. ‘Inglorious,’ as in a sordid, shadowy, self-serving ruse of an ousting: More ‘revolting’ than revolutionary.
Now, as longtime Prince of Wales, Charles, like his great uncle Edward VIII, also publicly expressed opinions that upset some strong quarters. If he does any such as King, and discreet whispers start to circulate that he is unfit for his office – despite decades of preparation for it – and perhaps should be nudged aside in the interests of ‘protecting democracy,’ please remember: It might not be the first time a King of England got driven out, theoretically due to personal failings, but in fact because he peeved some literal powers behind the throne.
I don’t pretend to have expert knowledge of British history and law, but am aware that, as to the parameters of 21st Century ‘Kingship,’ George V, who died 12 years before Charles was born, was a fairly hands-on sovereign, even called ‘an ideal constitutional monarch.’ During his reign (1910 – 36, including World War I), circumstances required him more than once to make practical political decisions reserved to the monarch such as use of royal assent, constitutional interpretation, etc., when events led to paralysis in the national government, or other potential crises.
His granddaughter, the late Elizabeth II – possibly sensing, or pointedly warned of, what actually brought down her uncle Edward VIII – was relatively passive for most of her 70 years as Queen. Legally, she really didn’t have many prerogatives of actual rule, but presumably had the same ones as George V, but seemingly rarely used them. Perhaps that was due to her training to reign, to a docile personality, because analogous issues to George V’s never arose for her – or perhaps she practiced utmost caution, having seen the friction her uncle’s overstepping the sensibilities of the powerful caused, whether or not it had directly led to his undoing.
King Charles may decide that, within the legal limits of English Kingship’s sphere – indeed, in the essence of his coronation oath to care for the well-being of all his people, not just the wealthy and prominent – he will be more engaged in setting the tone of national life than his late, beloved mother. If so, he might want to study his great-grandfather George V’s actions, if he hasn’t already, as a model for his own, to try to make his reign more useful to his nation than just a pageant, tourist attraction or platinum-handled rubber stamp.
As an American, I am not habituated to monarchy, and certainly couldn’t approve of the antique model of it, in which random birth leads to supreme rulership; there must be a better mechanism than that. Only after affirming that, will I say that neither do I sneer at Kingship as simply a perverse anachronism, for any nation with that tradition, current or recent. Elizabeth II showed that the office could still be unifying and stabilizing, as well as immeasurably coloring the lives of, and giving a sense of national purpose and community to, people who have, or perceive, few other sources of such benefits: The Disregarded.
Speaking of whom, it appears that many of the Westminster class, the elected Members of Parliament, are in danger of forfeiting (if they have not done so already) the ‘Democratic mandate’ which they piously intone validates their jurisdiction above a hereditary King or Queen. Britain’s long-ruling Conservative/Tory party’s claims to represent all citizens have worn so thin, they are now largely codswallop. It rules much as its American cousin, the Republican party, does: Protecting, increasing and entrenching the wealth, privilege and security of those who are already wealthy, privileged and secure – and hoping the mass electorate doesn’t notice. Assertions that they also govern in the interests of lowlier voters must appear a cynical charade, given how poorly they generally serve those constituents any time their wishes conflict with that of their actual ‘base’: The Mighty.
Further, I would point out that popular election led – in a semi-comical case in point – indirectly to the accession of the buffoonish Boris Johnson (a Prime Minister is ordinarily the head of whichever party has a majority in the House of Commons); hardly an example in popular election’s favor. Nowadays, Tory politicians may seem to be scarcely veiled shills for the affluent citizens of the UK, for whom the public apparatus of monarchy mainly serves as a decorous fig leaf of respectable pretense for their coarsely self-serving conduct of national policy.
That being the case – and having lived for 4 years under the Presidency of a man vividly unfit by experience, temperament and intellect for such responsibilities, but made so by ‘popular election’ (actually, the Electoral College) – my faith in its superiority as a mechanism for selecting leaders is no longer absolute. While I would never advocate Kingship in the U.S., for Britain – sometimes referred to as a ‘Royal Republic’ – a modestly more engaged Sovereign, adroitly calling attention to the (tactfully styled) ‘inadequate policies’ of those claiming to lead by right of election, however squalidly won or retained, might be genuinely helpful to a great many Britons.
At one time, ‘the Commons’ really did need to check royal overreach. But now, Britain may have come to the point where a wise, temperate ‘Carollus Rex’ might be able to contribute meaningfully to implementing the chivalrous substance of his sacred oath for his sacred office, to serve, protect and defend as much as possible the well-being of his people. All of them.
Because the Tories have sure as Hell shown – again and again, posturing brazenly all the way – they can’t be trusted to govern for the ‘well-being of his people’ in terms of shifting taxes, slicing public services, ad nauseam.
(I fantasize about drafting a mock coronation oath in which the feigned paternalistic care is stripped out, and the King curtly pledges to reign in – not to ‘rein in’ – the interests of the Grandees of the City of London’s financial markets and all other plutocrats, domestic and foreign: Arab, Russian, etc. It would drop the alleged concern for regular, left-behind Britain, where incomes are shrinking along with public services eroded by tax-slashing Conservatives. It would also include a firm reproof to his subject ‘proles’ not to press their tiresome hopes for a secure, First World standard of living, if providing such might disturb the Elysian comfort of their betters.)
In their virulent self-regard, too many in that ‘ruling caste’ seem to presume the Monarchy is mainly there to perform an edifying ceremonial role, and otherwise irrelevant. But they may be proved wrong.
Therefore, if King Charles III actually tries to have legitimate (‘advising and warning’) influence on what priorities ‘His’ government might focus on – to not just act as an ornamental bulwark of a Status Quo beloved by those who benefit most from it – be on the lookout. Scandals about, for example, his past romantic improprieties, may suddenly start to twitch again, questioning his worthiness for his exalted station. Or possibly the dominant cabal will even toy with dispensing with monarchy itself, if they decide it has finally become more trouble than it is worth, encumbering, rather than sustaining their primacy – national identity and the sensibilities of millions among the lower orders be damned. But here is some advice to those privileged beneficiaries: Your lot may have dispensed with the callow Edward VIII when people were less informed and likelier to believe whatever ‘authority’ said. But don’t assume you’ll get away with a second ‘Inglorious Revolution,’ shoddy, shadowy, shameless, and anything but patriotic.
Such people’s cynicism corrodes the respectable regal institution they rely on to dignify and camouflage their none too well-concealed self-interest. And thereby, they rely on a man about to take an oath – before God and the World – that he will reign for the welfare of his entire nation. But also a man whose judicious guidance might help moderate the disenchantment of a growing segment of the ‘United’ Kingdom, those exploited but otherwise ignored by entitled magnates, public and private, who still don’t grasp that Brexit may have been just a warning tremor of an Earthquake of gathering discontent beneath their feet.
CONTEXT: A final re-post, for now, from my 2016 visit to Berlin with my friend Paul. I post this to try to exorcise my still-throbbing rage at this image – as you, kind reader, will surely understand when you see it. This post was meant to convey stark, heartbreaking evidence of why Soviet style Communism not only would, but must succumb, as an encumbrance to the happiness of the world. This, my last word on the Berlin Wall, is chosen to affirm my opinion on that matter.
However: As I have aged (matured?), I cannot reconcile donning a metaphorical robe of righteousness to validate oneself and all that is dear to one – like a proud proclamation that ‘All men are created equal’ – then acting as if somehow, such assertions offset behaving non-righteously. For a coarse but valid example, let’s ask Native- and Black Americans how ‘equal’ America seems to them.
Loving something – as I love my country – or someone, doesn’t mean we must pretend the object of our affection is perfect. Indeed, love may let us recognize its potential to become better than it is, and strive to make it so. Thus, in my last post, about ‘Checkpoint Charlie,’ I suggested that despite having outlasted Communism and providing more material abundance, the American system of Capitalism is far from ‘perfect’ in various senses. And that we Americans should not avert our eyes from the harm and injustice that system is capable of doing.
For example – an echo of what you will see in this post – no doubt, innocent American children have also died needlessly because some executive made a ‘business decision’ to cut corners on car safety design – until the number of people killed in car crashes necessitated adding features to prevent such deaths. No robe of righteousness can conceal the implications and consequences of a culture that so often ‘puts profit before people.’
But for my last word on the subject: I believe absolutely that willingness to kill babies to uphold state control is far worse than accidents due to callousness (despicable though that is). A government that would do so has forfeited any right to obedience or respect, let alone patriotism. Be outraged and thankful the Berlin Wall and the awful regime that needed, built and maintained it are gone, but do not then be satisfied that our own society is faultless. Recognize its flaws, care for it in spite of them, and – if you feel it is worthwhile – resolve to help bring it closer to its ideals than it was, or is.
Photos of Children Killed Trying to Escape through Berlin Wall: The weather when Paul and I went to the site of this remnant of the Wall and memorial to fugitives murdered trying to get past it was chilly, gray and damp – thoroughly suitable for so depressing a spectacle. It started to rain as we walked around, as if Nature herself were weeping at this site of such bleak evidence of the folly and failings of men (that may sound like a cliché, but truly is how it felt). Many people had been killed at the Wall, their names and pictures enshrined here, but it was particularly infuriating to see these images of children – presumably their ages when they died, probably with parents risking all their lives to get to freedom – so that I may have snarled involuntarily aloud on seeing these. I’m not sure I did, but given the setting and provocation would not have been the least embarrassed to do so.
No single political ideology is so all-encompassing as to address every human need and aspiration. And any that assert that they are – as did both Communism and Nazism – must fall short, and often resort to force to maintain the semblance of inerrancy, so at odds with actual experience. The Soviet Eastern bloc was no Workers’ Paradise, no matter how often or loudly its rulers bellowed that it was. Their reflex was to suppress evidence to the contrary, and to treat anyone who wouldn’t play along with their official fictions as a criminal.
Capitalism certainly outlasted Communism, but that doesn’t mean that it was, or is, remotely perfect. No system in which some members flourish massively while others starve can ever be considered “ideal.” But that doesn’t mean I’d find any sort of Totalitarianism preferable to America’s messy, contentious, always-in-progress democracy.
And if I’d had any uncertainty about that before, seeing those pictures of dead babies certainly squashed it. Any sort of regime that can only survive by killing people, even children – for the heinous offense of wanting to live elsewhere is in effect, committing human sacrifice to the idols of its doctrine, rather than admit it is not flawless – is inherently doomed. The sooner it croaks the better; and that surely includes North Korea.
CONTEXT: This is another image and text from my 2016 visit to Berlin. This scene may have changed in the years since, as might the accuracy of my reference to trolleys remaining only in what had been East Berlin. I’ve heard since that there is some possibility of reinstalling them in former West Berlin given the traffic there, and Germany’s wish to discourage the prevalence of sole-occupancy cars, tohelp reduce Global Warming.
Which, along with its attendant mass refugees, and the worldwide emboldening of dictators such as Orban (and Putin/Xi) – as governments and business communities foolishly fray mutually beneficial Social Contracts with their countrymen – are developments that have accelerated or appeared, since this picture was taken.
One thing that has not changed since then, distressingly, is the dangerous and dispiriting way nations that had relative economic equality (or at least not ludicrous inequality) in the 30 years after World War II have continued to revert to a 19th Century/quasi-Third World social structure of a thin stratum of extremely rich, but heartless, stupidly shortsighted people – who divert more and more national wealth to themselves – and everyone else, from whom that wealth gets diverted, struggling to maintain a decent standard of living.
And justifiably resentful of needing to do so.That is relevant to the point I try to make at the end of this post, and it seems more true now than it did then. Which is depressing, but also ominous.
Even before the Berlin Wall was begun in 1961, travel between the city’s Soviet, and French, British and American zones was closely regulated, but not enough to stop the debilitating flow of East Germans to the West. This site on the broad roadway of the Friedrichstrasse was the only authorized entry/exit point between the American and Soviet sectors after the Wall was built.
The Americans officially regarded the division of Berlin as temporary, so never constructed permanent control-structures here (the wooden guardhouse now in place is a mockup erected to mark the original’s location). ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ saw frequent heartbreak and desperation after the Wall went up, as East Germans tried guile to sneak past here, as their country became, ever more, a veritable prison.
Please note the KFC sign, of a Kentucky Fried Chicken. I’m not sure that spreading relentless consumerism means that Capitalism “won” in the sense of proving objectively better than Communism, as this crass sign is hardly a banner of noble hopes fulfilled. But its presence at an iconic site of the Cold War certainly shows who buried whom (Soviet Premier Khrushchev, when his country was winning the Space Race, had jovially taunted the West “We will bury you.”).
Since 1990, eastern Berlin is being updated in ways Communist economics could not afford to do after the city’s devastation in the War, so as to gradually become indistinguishable from former West Berlin (other than trolley cars in the East, which had been ripped out of the West due to the abundance of private cars there). But putting a fast-food logo by a place that perhaps deserves reflection – even thoughtful respect, given what it has witnessed – suggests that not all change is invariably ‘improvement.’
Marxism failed to deliver on its Utopian promises, and was only sustained by force in East Europe till its inevitable collapse. However, a reality check would seem to be in order: Most Soviet Bloc propaganda about Capitalism and “bourgeois Democracy” was a tissue of lies, but it included one assertion that was not, and is not, so easily dismissed. It said that of all the supposed Freedoms in Democracy and Capitalism, the most basic is the ‘Freedom to Starve.’
Please reflect on whether that assertion actually was, and is, still basically true, if – when – you see homeless beggars in America. In post-war Communist Europe, state control of resources meant that almost no one chronically went hungry out of inability to make money, even if the general diet was pretty spare and bland. In my view, actions speak louder than platitudes, so our stated values of justice, fairness and equity are grievously compromised by the reality that some of our fellow citizens are effectively treated as acceptable collateral casualties of the Free Market.
For me, that echoes – distantly, but still too close for comfort – with Stalin’s indifference to the colossal loss of Russian troops’ lives in order to conquer Hitler. We in the West might not sacrifice blood that way, but it is less clear that we will not sometimes let whole lifetimes be wasted.
This should not be idly accepted in any society professing that each person has value – in America, ‘endowed by their Creator’ – as distinct from his or her worth in hard assets. That concept is the supposed foundation of our celebration of the Individual, and is stained when any life is treated as being of no inherent importance. Even that of a homeless beggar.
In this case, Soviet propaganda seems to have been right on the money; so to speak. No one – not even a Communist – is wrong All the time.
CONTEXT: I am working on a couple of larger projects for this blog now, but meanwhile, will repost a few lightly revised items from my 2016 visit to Europe. Starting with some more from Berlin, the lynchpin destination, from my historian’s perspective, of that journey.
To my great surprise, the actual Wall (or at least this part of it) was relatively flimsy, just concrete a couple inches thick. It had disintegrated in spots, exposing rusting steel re-bar within; in some places it had crumbled away entirely, leaving a hole clear through to the other side. When it was intact, it may have appeared impregnable, but a few sledgehammer swings could have bashed holes right through it.
However, it didn’t have to be massive, just a solid barrier. Probably few East Berliners knew how insubstantial it really was, let alone had implements that could punch through its apparent muscle. When the Wall was new, simpler methods might still breach it. For example, a few fugitives drove large trucks straight into it, successfully battering into West Berlin, where the Wall guards dared not shoot or pursue. (Presumably Moscow, which usually had the last word on regime actions in Eastern Europe, ordered such restraint, unwilling to provoke the NATO powers over issues of non-critical strategic importance.)
The Wall complex was gradually enhanced by watch towers along its length with machine guns and total visibility firing lines. Eventually, the wide “Death Strip,” guard dogs, land mines, trip alarms were all added in response to the desperation and ingenuity of Ossies (East Germans/“Ostdeutscher”) to bypass it.
Communism in practice met neither its ideals nor promises, so during the 1950’s, a hemorrhage of East Germans, especially skilled, educated and energetic ones, crossed from their Workers’ Republic into West Berlin, then the easiest crossing point between the two Germanies. Aside from the embarrassment of masses of its people ‘voting with their feet’ thus, East Germany was hurt by the loss of many of its most gifted citizens. To put a halt to that outflow, in 1961, the boundary between east and west Berlin was temporarily closed with barbed wire while the Wall was built. (Harsh barriers had already been put at the East-West German border, ostensibly to prevent invasion by NATO. In fact, they were as much, if not more, to keep East Europeans behind the so-called “Iron Curtain,” the western edge of the nations of the Warsaw Pact, the post-war Soviet sphere of influence.)
Other parts of the Wall may have been more robust than this bit looked. But I wonder if, when it was first built, the East German authorities sincerely thought it would only be needed temporarily – and thus not need to be terribly sturdy – till their citizenry became lulled into loving Communism, and no longer wanted to flee to the wicked, decadent West. If they really believed that, it is a measure of how deep delusion can be: Why would anyone love a state that might kill them if they didn’t return its ‘affection’? And how could its rulers not realize how unrealistic that was?
Those questions are just rhetorical. More likely, they made the Wall just enough of an obstacle to slow down would-be escapees till they drew the attention of the guards and their machine guns. Rather than delusion, it was probably the hardest cynicism, the Regime knowing full well most people would never really want to live in a state that could give them no better than semi-poverty, watched and harangued them constantly – and could be murderous to retain control.
The Wall’s frailty, as shown here, proved an apt metaphor for the inherent weakness of Soviet-style Communism, or of any regime that can only survive by coercion, an ostentatious pretense of invincibility, and propaganda that is obviously in conflict with lived reality.
Surely, bondage by intractable doctrine cannot have been what Marx intended when he proposed Communism – communal ownership of means of production – to protect ordinary workers from the abysmal depredations laid on them by the raptor Capitalists of the 19th century (Labor unions, often demonized now, were instrumental in preventing outright Communism from arising in the West, but that’s another story). Nowhere was this perversion of initially benign intentions more starkly and brutally manifest than by the Berlin Wall.
But also, nowhere was it more splendidly overturned, as East Germans forced the Wall open, then hammered it down late in 1989. For Berlin, liberation was personal; for the World, that stepping back from the chilling peril of the Cold War caused a collective sigh of relief so great it felt as if it had blown away much of the 20th century’s fear, chronic anxiety, and basis for despair. Believe me; I remember feeling just that way then.
In observance of Good Friday, here is an excerpt from J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, his monumental music depicting the grim, inexorable path of Jesus from the last supper to crucifixion. Anyone wishing to meditate on the traditional sacredness of today may find this gentle, caressing melody helpful to do so.
Many of the Passion’s segments use mighty choral and orchestral forces, but this one is small in scale, yet vast in scope. Bach’s original version has lyrics, but to me, his matchless, free-form abstraction here is so affecting by itself that any accompanying words reduce its impact, so the posted one uses only flute and piano. However, knowing its opening sentence prepares a listener for the sentiment that served as Bach’s inspiration: ‘Out of love, my sinless Savior accepted death’ for my sake.
For Bach, that was no pious banality, but the true nectar of salvation, and the implications of those words are eloquently conveyed by the loveliness of his artistic invention here. The piece meanders, suggesting a dazed, stricken soul wandering in lamentation, even as it is awed by the ‘Agapé’ – selfless love of the ‘Other’ – that Jesus displayed, and that enabled Him to endure the cross. In fact, this music may even represent Christ’s own personal consciousness; sweet and gentle, but perplexed – if not surprised – by the unprovoked cruelty befalling Him. When I first heard this, it seemed too moving to be from this side of eternity. It is a diaphanous Shade, benign, but seemingly beyond our familiar reference.
Bach put this exquisite melancholia between Pilate’s bewildered assertion that he found Jesus utterly innocent, and the dissonant bellow of the mob demanding His death. The crevasse between Christ’s preternatural goodness and the convulsive savagery it was to perversely set in motion was a virtual rip in the fabric of objective reality, but with this aria, Bach contributes greatly to mending that rip. He bestows a creation of such paralyzing beauty as to help offset the ugliness and evil to which it reacts – and thereby, help console the very sorrows it evokes.
This image shows the defaced statue of Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, Air Marshall of the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War 2, outside London’s church of Saint Clement Danes. An ironic name for the location of such a monument, as will be noted below.
In 1942, Harris was appointed head of RAF Bomber Command, from which position he helped devise and implement ‘Area Bombing,’ the targeting of general vicinities of industrial and military significance in Nazi Germany. This strategy replaced ‘Precision Bombing,’ which was highly risky and relatively ineffective, given the coarse aiming technology of the time.
But Area Bombing also killed a horrendous toll of German civilians, which Harris more or less admitted was at least part of its intention. In addition to attempting to destroy legitimate targets like materiel depots, airfields, rails, munitions plants etc., this tactic kept ordinary citizens of German cities in a semi-permanent state of disrupting fear. It also meant to keep the Nazi regime concerned about domestic unrest, and obliged to devote resources to detecting and suppressing it.
Harris was forthright about his wish to inflict terror on the German masses to keep them as unproductive and discontented as possible so as to shorten the war. For example, RAF archives hold horrifying (in my view) maps and tables showing the composition of major German towns in terms of how flammable their building stock was. That is, how well it would burn, for at the time a great deal of urban Germany still consisted largely of wood-framed/roofed structures from the Renaissance and earlier. Harris explicitly directed high-explosives and incendiaries to be dropped on such pyres-in-waiting to consume them, any people inside them at the moment, and as much as possible, any sense of order and personal security among survivors.
Yet German civilian morale never substantially cracked, and military historians – which I am not – have argued about whether the impact of Area Bombing on Hitler’s ability to continue the war was worth discarding Britain’s cherished, integral self-image of decency and fair play, given its appalling cost in non-combatant lives. Compared to about 40,000 Britons who died in the Blitz (although far more throughout conquered Europe), some 500,000 German civilians were killed by Allied airstrikes. Many of those ‘Huns’ surely just wanted to live unmolested, but were trapped between the fear of the bombs, and the terror of their own government’s Gestapo and other security services.
The Nazis got very good at compensating for such attacks by dispersing their war production facilities to multiple smaller, hard to target locations, and other measures. So it is not clear that the practical damage inflicted by Area Bombing was worth the enormous loss of non-military lives; to say nothing of grievously compromising the Western Democracies’ claim to any moral high ground. Also, I have heard expert opinion that the biggest effect of Harris’ campaign – though it was admittedly an immense one – was only indirect. That is, it forced the Nazis to keep anti-aircraft guns in Germany to protect the homeland, instead of sending them to the Eastern Front for use against the Soviet Air Force during combat operations.
This gave the Russians vastly greater freedom to deploy their bombers and fighters as part of ground battles against Hitler’s armies, which they did with devastating effect. That being the case, if Harris had used an approach that did not implicitly victimize the German populace, it might have been just as effective in keeping many anti-aircraft weapons away from the war in the East. But again, I leave it to specialists to settle the practical efficacy of Area Bombing.
Ever since the war (and even during it), there has been debate, especially in Britain, whether Harris’ strategy – of which the joint Anglo-American attack on Dresden may be the ultimate instance – itself amounted to a war crime. After all, his method had similar effects to Nazi air attacks on cities such as Warsaw, Rotterdam, Stalingrad, etc., and to London and other targets in Britain during the Blitz. This fervent controversy led to this splashing of blood-red paint, and writing SHAME on this statue dedicated to his leadership.
Surely conscience should demand that good-hearted people not just shrug and say, ‘War is hell, and Hitler started the savagery.’ While that is true, put another way, it is not (inherently somehow) ‘’different’’ when We do it.
(That ‘We’ must include America, which also helped bomb Germany. Moreover, the U.S. had an analogue to Harris in USAF General Curtis LeMay, a ferocious aggressor who designed techniques to be used against Japan. Those sacrificed even more civilian lives than the air war in Europe, including 100,000 in a single incendiary raid on Tokyo – more than the nuclear strike on Hiroshima.)
On the other hand: Abstract ideals must be weighed against the concrete, paramount need to vanquish an evil like Nazism. At the time of Harris’ campaign, it was not at all clear, or certain, that Hitler would lose, however apparent that may look in hindsight. Given the stakes of this dilemma, I would propose that Harris’ collateral targeting of civilians – unspeakable as it was – might not be radically more shameful than many other deeds committed in wartime for the sake of defeating a ruthless foe.
So perhaps the real disgrace is how the British state saw fit to lionize Harris in this statue, seeming to brush aside all pretense of restraint or mercy (i.e., clemency; hence the indecorous irony of such a memorial being outside St. Clement Danes; there was nothing ‘clement’ about the deeds for which this man is being celebrated). Tactics like Area Bombing may be necessary to national survival, but even so, should they not be limited to acceptance as dreadful necessity? Instead of appearing to honor them as deeds whose memory should be revered?
In this context, one must draw a distinction between ‘honor’ and ‘gratitude.’ That is, I personally am thankful to all men and women, anywhere, who took harsh steps to ensure that Hitler ultimately lost. But I cannot ‘honor’ – without reflection – all of their actions, more than I lament the human failings that made them necessary.
Applauding carnage unreservedly is something Hitler would assuredly have done. And as is often the case, Hitler can serve as a model for all we should Not want to do, or to be. Can’t he? No qualms of conscience for him, ever: Nor for anyone who values absolutely nothing but winning.
Moreover, here is another perspective to consider: Besides the paint and ‘SHAME’ graffito, please also reflect on the fresh flowers at the base of the statue, presumably left after its defacement; maybe even in reaction to it. Those may have been put there by somebody who lost a loved one in the devastation of Coventry, or one whose mother’s sanity had been about to snap, or innumerable other deep personal concerns. The flowers may be a tribute to Harris’ presumed contributions to halting the Luftwaffe attacks on Britain. And yes, also possible gloating, out of fear or fury.
So is it too facile for those of us living long after the war was over, to whom its terrors are just ‘history,’ to claim that the sentiments of the flower-giver should be disregarded? Does anyone speaking retrospectively – in a world made safe, at incalculable cost, from Nazism – truly have the standing to decry the reactions of those forced to live through the fear, horror, suffering and sorrow it inflicted? Or with tragic family legends of those? The expression ‘Easy for you to say,’ comes to mind; ‘Your flesh and blood weren’t in the line of fire.’
If you had reason to believe that Harris’ bombing had saved you and all that you loved from Hitler’s wrath, would your priority still be a theoretical sense of benevolent equity? I am not in the least sure that mine would. We in the 21st Century view these events from a distance that affords us perspective, but deprives us of immediacy. Do we, today, have the right to dismiss the feelings of all those who actually faced the multi-pronged Nazi onslaught as irrelevant?
Only after saying all of that can I assert that although these may be unanswerable questions, it reflects an underlying humane decency even to be asking them, as British society has, when acting in its best spirit. One can be quite sure that no Totalitarian government, like the Nazis’, would even comprehend, let alone tolerate, consideration and discussion of such issues. Inquiries like these are marks of a society that is not only free, but that may be trying to attain a higher level of Human Evolution; even of Human Nature. The responses this statue has provoked give a stark example of the ongoing conflict between our reactions as organisms, and our aspirations to transcend those. Though of course, it is very far from the only example.
Perhaps the pitilessness of men like ‘Bomber’ Harris – or for that matter of Churchill himself, who could be as nasty in pursuit of triumph as his ancestor, Marlborough – was a terrible, but inescapable necessity to prevent the far worse outcome of Hitler successfully dominating our planet. Feasible moderate alternatives for preventing such a nightmare are not readily apparent; like a mad dog, there was really no way to reason with a biped beast like him. Although in a global war, the mad dog was not the only one that had to die, to eliminate the danger. I understand the need for military force, even if with regret, by nations that would at least try to pursue traditional ‘righteousness’ in a world in which the wicked may gain power and – because they don’t Care who gets hurt – wield it mercilessly.
But bronze effigies glorifying such hideous expedience seem several steps too far. Determination not to be conquered by Hitler was justifiable and understandable, but having sanctioned tactics like Harris’, Britain cannot just revert to a self-perception of virtuous temperance. That soothing image has been marred like this statue; possibly forever.
We can be glad people like Harris did what they did so that Fascism got destroyed. But we should also mourn that it was necessary for them to do so; that the human race can secrete an incubus like Adolf Hitler, even if it can also generate the will, genius and valor to thwart him. In an ideal world, someone like him would not even exist, let alone become leader of a great nation. But he did. So this stern, repulsive reality must be factored into our perceptions and actions.
Perhaps we should move such statues, as memorials to military prowess – particularly in countries truly striving for a better world, and in cases that reflect excessive brutality – to military installations, settings where defending a nation is a right, proper priority. This statue, for example, might be relocated to RAF Base Northolt, near London. Then, such public totems of ‘dreadful necessity’ might be replaced with something else, to remind us of the absence of war, and the contrasting value of peace. Any suggestions?
In these posts, I usually try to reach some conclusion about my topic, but in this case I would not feel comfortable doing so. Not only can I not agree that there is an easy answer to this quandary of honor vs. abhorrence, but I would distrust any claim that only one conclusion is possible, or valid. The dispute over this statue symbolizes a tension between our most compassionate inclinations, and our equally valid, innate desire for self-preservation. Such tension can never be fully released, and I would suggest that it should not be.
For that tension is the ‘Defining Dilemma’ of my title; a tug to, at least, try to be better than our basest nature.
Presumably we will never lose the reflex to defend our Selves, even if it requires destroying other ‘Selves.’ But neither should we forsake the stalwart ethical impulses whose very existence marks us as so different from other living beings. We must aspire, in the aggregate at least, to be better than creatures whose only involuntary purpose is to cling to life. For us also, that instinct is necessary; but as I have said in other posts and contexts, it absolutely cannot – must not – be sufficient for us.
The most appropriate shade to tint Harris may lie somewhere between the intrinsic darkness of his deeds – the deadly Nazi menace notwithstanding – and the white of those blossoms left at the base of his statue; lovely, delicate and fragrant. Everything that war is not.
CONTEXT: Today marks one year since ‘Operation Barbarous’ – the criminal (in multiple senses), cruel invasion of a peaceful sovereign state, Ukraine, by a larger overbearing neighbor – began. Russia, the aggressor, is led by Vladimir Putin, a man who seems to be guided by a bizarre blend of KGB cynicism and 19th Century Czarist national Chauvinism. By an arrogant megalomaniac who cannot accept that Might does Not make ‘right.’
Beyond the perennial horrors of war and the anachronistic indifference to (along with outright targeting of) civilians and their well-being, this state-sponsored felony has been both a terrible spectacle and an economic shock for a world still reeling from a Pandemic. But my post below finds optimism that we are not wholly unable to learn from the mistakes and tragedies of the past; at least, not if we have wise, proportionate leadership. Something Russia has now been lividly proven to lack; and not for the first time.
President Biden’s age is often cast as a liability, but at the moment, its accompanying frame of reference may prove to be a priceless advantage.
Born in 1942, he can have no memory of the Munich Conference of 1938, from which the accompanying black and white image of British Prime Minister Chamberlain comes. But Biden grew up in world a still shattered, reeling and heartbroken from World War 2, set in motion in no small part by wishful thinking like Chamberlain’s, of believing that a palpable brute like Adolf Hitler could be ‘appeased’ by capitulating to his outrageous blackmail in forlorn hope that he would refrain from further, and worse ones.
But ruthless men, like Hitler, Stalin and now Putin – seemingly closer in nature to wild animals than to humans – will, like wild animals, interpret appeasement (mercy, kindness, generosity, moderation, etc.) as signs of weakness and/or irresolution, and exploit them savagely.
In the famous image here, Chamberlain waves a piece of paper signed by himself and Hitler, on which the latter promised he has ‘no further territorial ambitions in Europe,’ in return for the British and French having just ceded him Czech territory (that was not theirs to give). In any case, Hitler’s promise was a cynical lie, and his ‘territorial ambitions in Europe’ were just getting started. A few months later, in March 1939, Hitler would absorb the rest of Czechoslovakia, in sneering contempt for his vow not to do any such thing.
After caving in at Munich, the western democracies began to prepare madly for war, but the Nazis had too great a head-start on them. Besides which, military conquest was by then the main preoccupation of German society, industry and economy, a focus that any peace-loving and sensible people – like the French or British – would be loath to accept.
In September of that year, Hitler invaded Poland, finally provoking the western democracies to declare war on Germany. He could have been stopped with relative ease when he re-occupied the Rhineland in 1936, had the French and British governments of the day recognized, or admitted, what a fiend they were dealing with. Several other such brazen tests of will were committed later, but after the Czech Sudeten Crisis was ‘resolved’ at Munich in 1938, it was no longer possible to ignore Hitler’s actual doctrine: ‘Winning’ is all that matters, and justifies any evil done in its pursuit.
(Chamberlain gets a partially bum rap on appeasement; he was not just some foolish sap who couldn’t see what Hitler was, as simplistic versions of these events imply. But he didn’t want to divert revenues from civil functions to massive war preparation until it was unmistakable that Nazism was an existential threat to Britain, for every penny spent on rearming had to be taken from needs like roads, education, hospitals, etc.; proper priorities of any regime serious about serving its citizens. Besides; only a madman, like Hitler, would Not move Heaven and Earth to avoid another war like the 1914-1918 nightmare.)
So now, President Biden, having grown up in a world that had just paid a ghastly price for not confronting villains before their power peaked, has the experience, wisdom and resolution to recognize Hitler-like deeds and attitudes when he sees them, only this time, coming out of Moscow. And to reject Chamberlain’s well-meaning, but catastrophic strategy of yielding to a thug, hoping he’ll stop acting like a thug. Why would a jumped-up gangster do that, when ‘thuggery’ keeps getting him what he wants?
‘Sieg Heil’ translates to ‘Victory, Hail,’ and lying is the least of the crimes someone like Hitler would commit to come out on top. Brutes in suits like him think ‘Just weaklings and fools will play by the rules.’
(A rarely-voiced observation: Too many business people have parallel ‘win-no-matter-how/rules-are-for-suckers’ attitudes. I consider that mindset ‘Fascism lite.’ They may seek cash instead of conquest, but slow poison is still poison, warping our world.)
Much later, Churchill said of prewar efforts to indulge Hitler, ‘The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.’ I cannot consider attributes like mania to avoid repeating the horror of the Great War – as any sane, righteous person would do – as ‘weakness.’ However, I will grant that the danger Nazism posed should have been recognized much sooner than it was.
Moreover, the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Putin, in addition to exploiting any decency and rationality of their opponents, had another advantage, whose import we should never underestimate:
The wicked don’t give a damn who gets hurt. The righteous must do so.
Thus today, Putin is just fine with sacrificing the lives of his own soldiers and Ukrainian ones (as well as civilians) because, as always for such feral personalities, self-interest and ‘saving face’ are far more important than preserving lives. In this, Putin has more in common with his idol Stalin than with Hitler, for whom German blood was sacred, to be spent sparingly (though of course, he felt other peoples’ blood was worthless).
In contrast, Stalin, after Hitler invaded the USSR in June of 1941, threw masses of Soviet youth into the gears of the monstrous Nazi war machine to slow, and eventually jam it, with Asiatic callousness. Soviet victory came at a profligate price in lives – 20 million at least, soldiers and civilians – that no free society would have tolerated (although this toll was kept secret for decades). Especially because prewar miscalculations by Stalin, like his paranoid purging of his best army officers, had made his land look, to the Nazis, so temptingly vulnerable. As indeed it was.
Sadly, the Russian populace today still seems to assume heartlessness, brutality and criminal pride are, and should be, how rulers think and act.
Fortunately however, one thing Hitler and Putin don’t have in common are capable armed forces. Whereas by 1939, the German Wehrmacht was the best-led, most efficient, technologically advanced military in the world, ambient Russian culture today seems to allow the most beast-like men to attain power, less by brains or competence than by willingness and cunning to crush rivals.
This mindset is incompatible with successfully running a 21st Century nation, or economy – or army. Those activities now demand finesse, forethought, abstract conceptualization – all things that Monomakh-niacal apes like Putin grasp barely, if at all. Let alone practice expertly.
This is being written immediately after President Biden’s surprise 2/22/23 visit to Kyiv, shown in the bright color photo adjacent to the one of Chamberlain. Biden made this determined gesture to demonstrate America’s practical and spiritual solidarity with Ukraine’s sacred task of thwarting the Counter-Evolutionaries – Putin firstly, but all who assume the rest of us should just bow to them like we are lesser wolves and they are our bigger, fiercer Alphas – of the world. And by defending and saving their nation, preserving, in the largest sense, a path forward for our whole species, rather than our reversion to rule by brute force alone; as Hitlerist dogma advocated.
It should be born in mind that Kyiv at the time Biden went there was by no means entirely safe from sudden assault by (civilian/ infrastructure targeting) Russian missiles, so such a visit took considerable personal courage. Regardless of what risk mitigation strategies were used to protect him, Biden had to walk into a place still liable to ferocious, indiscriminate attack. Fortunately none materialized, but there could be no guarantees against them.
Perhaps Biden was willing to accept such a hazard because – having grown up with the consequences of not pushing vicious tyrants back – he decided that helping to protect America and the West (both by his brave gesture and by providing Ukraine first class military hardware) was his duty as unofficial ‘Leader of the Free World.’
A duty worth compromising his own security, and if need be even losing his life. In that case, remembering that his sacrifice was made trying to help achieve a world in which peace, not the exercise of raw power, is the Status Quo would be his finest memorial.
Putin is furious at getting the kind of forceful pushback Hitler never got till after Munich, by which time he was already too powerful to be defeated except at unspeakable cost. So now we are watching while he writhes in outraged pride. And it is Biden’s mature, equitable version of ‘manhood’ that may help save us from domination by Putin’s primitive, violent variety of it.
All Things Gaul 