A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at either end
--Lenin
No Vietamese ever called me nigger
--Muhammad Ali
A fully equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts
--David Lloyd George
The past is not dead. It's not even past.
--William Faulkner
Something about Donald Trump has turned me into a reader of history.
Maybe it's his complete indifference to history, to history as it existed a month ago or a few minutes ago, as in "I know nothing about Wikileaks."
Reading Margaret McMillan's wonderful book about the causes of World War I almost began to grasp the idea of history. History is one long argument, of course, but what Ms. McMillan shows is history is a river with many currents and they all flow in and out together to take us somewhere.
And, as obvious as it may seem to say, we are all here because we came from somewhere, and, as Faulkner noted, in that sense, the past lives in all of us today.
McMillan is unusual in her willingness to step out of her historian's role and to parenthetically point out how what happened then devolved to where we are now today, even in the case of a small town on the Nile which was poor then and is still poor but became the focus of conflict between England and France and then got swept up into the conflicts which persist in Sudan and that part of Africa today.
The World War, and I am beginning to think of WWI and WW II as simply one long fight, with a pause between the rounds, happened because of struggles between the haves and the have nots in European countries. In this sense, Lenin and the communists were correct, the "nations" of Europe were divided by boundaries and borders but the wars they fought were really fought by hapless workers who constituted a single interest group, the dispossessed, duped into fighting the boys in the other uniforms by calls for "patriotism."
So Lenin's remark about the bayonet is true. The German farm boy with the bayonet had no antipathy toward the Russian peasant or the Frenchman or the British butler with the bayonet but each of them had been indoctrinated with the idea of "patriotism" and "God, King and country."
As for the kings, well, they were never in danger and war was nothing more than horse racing with respect to their own personal fortunes. Even the Kaiser, in the end simply decamped to the Netherlands and continued to live in luxury.
In Eric Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" this theme of the German soldier in the trenches having no animosity toward his enemy across no man's land comes up again and again and the Germans say what they should do is to put the Kaiser and the King of France in a field, in their underpants, with cudgels and let them fight it out and then everyone could go home.
This is really what they were saying at Woodstock, during the summer of peace and love. Make love not war. We've got no skin in this game.
In fact, reading between McMillan's lines, you can clearly see the importance to the ruling classes that the idea of patriotism and country be promulgated, because without a foreign enemy to loathe, the working classes would look for more local targets for their seething resentment and hate.
Mr. Trump has played this hand over and over.
"You will all be winners. You'll be winning so much you'll get bored of winning."
One of the most fascinating characters to emerge in this history is the Welchman, David Lloyd George, who grew up speaking Welch in a part of the United Kingdom which, I am led to believe is something like West Virginia is to the United States, disparaged, poor, uneducated and disregarded.
Of course, other currents which flowed toward the great War were rooted in animosities which percolated among common folk: Ethnic hatreds in Bosnia, the Balkans, between Slavs and Germans drove nations toward conflict. Hate trumped love in those parts of Europe. It was not all peace and love among the have nots.
Part of the run up the the War, one of the currents, was an arms race to build the greatest navy. Britain, or its leaders, which included the king but also the parliament, believed it could be invaded unless its navy was indisputably superior to all others. It needed not "air superiority" as we now say, but naval superiority. When Germany began challenging that with a program of building ships, England felt threatened, and the British inclination toward Germany and against its historical enemy, France, shifted. So individuals in the British government steered her into conflict with Germany.
Lloyd George did not disagree, at least in the beginning, about the need to win the arms race but he was determined the economic consequences be born by the upper classes as well as by the poor. He campaigned for a "death duty" on inherited estates, and for property taxes, disproportionately falling on the land owning class and he went on to institute the first national health care system, social security and other benefits for the less wealthy part of the population. Immigrants living more than 10 years in the country we eligible for all benefits.
Lloyd George (who was Margaret McMillan's great grandfather--and she describes him as "a radical) was on the wrong side of history in some instances: He was a major actor in the 1918 treaty which insured the continuation of the war 20 years later and he insisted on Irish conscription which led to the infamous Easter rebellion and ultimately the "Troubles." But he was someone who had come from a downtrodden place and never forgot his roots, the struggles of the people on both sides of the bayonet.
--Lenin
No Vietamese ever called me nigger
--Muhammad Ali
A fully equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts
--David Lloyd George
The past is not dead. It's not even past.
--William Faulkner
Something about Donald Trump has turned me into a reader of history.
Maybe it's his complete indifference to history, to history as it existed a month ago or a few minutes ago, as in "I know nothing about Wikileaks."
Reading Margaret McMillan's wonderful book about the causes of World War I almost began to grasp the idea of history. History is one long argument, of course, but what Ms. McMillan shows is history is a river with many currents and they all flow in and out together to take us somewhere.
And, as obvious as it may seem to say, we are all here because we came from somewhere, and, as Faulkner noted, in that sense, the past lives in all of us today.
McMillan is unusual in her willingness to step out of her historian's role and to parenthetically point out how what happened then devolved to where we are now today, even in the case of a small town on the Nile which was poor then and is still poor but became the focus of conflict between England and France and then got swept up into the conflicts which persist in Sudan and that part of Africa today.
The World War, and I am beginning to think of WWI and WW II as simply one long fight, with a pause between the rounds, happened because of struggles between the haves and the have nots in European countries. In this sense, Lenin and the communists were correct, the "nations" of Europe were divided by boundaries and borders but the wars they fought were really fought by hapless workers who constituted a single interest group, the dispossessed, duped into fighting the boys in the other uniforms by calls for "patriotism."
So Lenin's remark about the bayonet is true. The German farm boy with the bayonet had no antipathy toward the Russian peasant or the Frenchman or the British butler with the bayonet but each of them had been indoctrinated with the idea of "patriotism" and "God, King and country."
As for the kings, well, they were never in danger and war was nothing more than horse racing with respect to their own personal fortunes. Even the Kaiser, in the end simply decamped to the Netherlands and continued to live in luxury.
In Eric Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" this theme of the German soldier in the trenches having no animosity toward his enemy across no man's land comes up again and again and the Germans say what they should do is to put the Kaiser and the King of France in a field, in their underpants, with cudgels and let them fight it out and then everyone could go home.
This is really what they were saying at Woodstock, during the summer of peace and love. Make love not war. We've got no skin in this game.
In fact, reading between McMillan's lines, you can clearly see the importance to the ruling classes that the idea of patriotism and country be promulgated, because without a foreign enemy to loathe, the working classes would look for more local targets for their seething resentment and hate.
Mr. Trump has played this hand over and over.
"You will all be winners. You'll be winning so much you'll get bored of winning."
One of the most fascinating characters to emerge in this history is the Welchman, David Lloyd George, who grew up speaking Welch in a part of the United Kingdom which, I am led to believe is something like West Virginia is to the United States, disparaged, poor, uneducated and disregarded.
Of course, other currents which flowed toward the great War were rooted in animosities which percolated among common folk: Ethnic hatreds in Bosnia, the Balkans, between Slavs and Germans drove nations toward conflict. Hate trumped love in those parts of Europe. It was not all peace and love among the have nots.
Part of the run up the the War, one of the currents, was an arms race to build the greatest navy. Britain, or its leaders, which included the king but also the parliament, believed it could be invaded unless its navy was indisputably superior to all others. It needed not "air superiority" as we now say, but naval superiority. When Germany began challenging that with a program of building ships, England felt threatened, and the British inclination toward Germany and against its historical enemy, France, shifted. So individuals in the British government steered her into conflict with Germany.
Lloyd George did not disagree, at least in the beginning, about the need to win the arms race but he was determined the economic consequences be born by the upper classes as well as by the poor. He campaigned for a "death duty" on inherited estates, and for property taxes, disproportionately falling on the land owning class and he went on to institute the first national health care system, social security and other benefits for the less wealthy part of the population. Immigrants living more than 10 years in the country we eligible for all benefits.
Lloyd George (who was Margaret McMillan's great grandfather--and she describes him as "a radical) was on the wrong side of history in some instances: He was a major actor in the 1918 treaty which insured the continuation of the war 20 years later and he insisted on Irish conscription which led to the infamous Easter rebellion and ultimately the "Troubles." But he was someone who had come from a downtrodden place and never forgot his roots, the struggles of the people on both sides of the bayonet.
Mad Dog,
ReplyDeleteAlthough most intelligent human beings would readily acknowledge the importance of a good command of history when looking to avert monumental tragedies like WWI and II-most folks don't have that knowledge-you sir, would be in the minority. Certainly Trump lacks the ability to look at things in a historical context-that ability would require reading and reflection-two skills foreign to him. He'd rather wing it, in much the same way mammals lower on the food chain would determine their next action....Comforting thought...I wonder if the general population of the EU would be better versed in what led to WWI than the US population. In any case "the anesthesia of amnesia" pretty brilliantly sums it up...
Maud
Ms. Maud,
ReplyDeleteHistory is one long argument. The volunteer Park Service guy told us on the tour of Ft. Sumter that Lee freed his slaves and the only slave owner at Appomattox was Gen. Grant. I could not restrain myself and informed him Robert E. Lee was a slaver, pursued escaped slaves ruthlessly and vindictively and Grant did not own slaves although his wife's family did. That was from foggy memory. Soon as I got home Professor Google informed me Grant owned one slave who he freed in 1859 well before Appomattox. He was famously incapable of forcing any slave to work. He did say he was no abolitionist but he had no stomach for slavery. Lee, on the other hand may or may not have freed his slaves but he didn't need them because his wife owned 290, who he managed and sold as needed. When three escaped to MD, he suggested they be whipped and "sold South" to worse conditions when they were caught.
But even Professor Google does not speak from Heaven with thunderbolts.
I do believe, with caution, in Professor Google, especially when she tells me what I want to hear.