Heroes

by William H. Benson

July 27, 2017

     The 50’s and 60’s presented me with a wonderful set of heroes: Roy Rogers, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Perry Mason, Neil Armstrong, Mickey Mantle, and Bart Starr. Some were real, others fictional.

     When young, the public librarians saw me often. I read most of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, and Earl Stanley Gardner, and came to admire Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and Perry Mason, for their resourcefulness, intuitive wisdom, and skill at detection.

     I enjoyed watching television: cowboys and westerns, detectives and mysteries, football and basketball games. The stories and the games pulled me in, just as video games entice the young today.

     George Will, the columnist, pointed out how the western converted into the mystery. “The closing of the frontier drove the cowboy to town where he became a detective.”

     The first hero worship that I witnessed occurred on August 13, 1969, when I watched on television as the three Apollo 11 astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins—rode in a convertible, down Broadway and Park Avenue in New York City during a ticker tape parade.

     When in my twenties, during the 1980 presidential election, a majority of Americans voted for Ronald Reagan, a former sports announcer, cowboy movie star, and California governor. The writer Paul Johnson called Reagan “a happy hero, who tried to communicate this happiness, and succeeded.”

     Heroes and hero worship. Over the centuries, thinkers have wondered about the hero’s role in civilization’s progress. In ancient Greece, Plato argued for a philosopher-king. He believed citizens would enjoy the best government when philosophers ruled the nation. To achieve an ideal community, he said, “philosophers must become kings, or those now called kings must philosophize.”

     Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth-century Scottish thinker, listed his heroes in his book, Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History: the gods of mythology, Thor and Odin; the poets, Dante and Shakespeare; the prophet Muhammed; the priests Luther and Knox; the men of letters Samuel Johnson, Rousseau, and Robert Burns; and the kings, Cromwell and Napoleon; some real, and some fictional.

     Carlyle insisted that great people—those gifted with supreme power, vision, and action—should lead the masses, because “only then would humanity achieve true progress.” He looked around him and could find no one great who dared to lead. Europe lacked will and leadership, and so the people were lost in commercialism and self-gratification, and could not convert their lives into something great.

     Carlyle went so far as to suggest that citizens should worship their heroes, but not so far as to create a set of rituals for worship, or a set of scriptures and texts.

     The German philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche, took Plato and Carlyle’s ideas and arrived at the idea of a superior man, an overman, or in German, an Übermensch, who would guide his followers toward new values that would satisfy people now, while they lived, and not in heaven after they pass on.

     Paul Johnson wrote in his book Heroes that one can determine who are a society’s heroes by the number of times that a person or character appears in the movies. By the year 2000, Sherlock Holmes was first with 211 times. Following him, in order, were Napoleon, Dracula, Frankenstein, and Lincoln.

     The trouble with hero worship is that heroes grow old or die. Micky Mantle is gone, as is Neil Armstrong. Buzz Aldrin is 87, Michael Collins is 86, and Bart Starr is 83. Roy Rogers died in 1998 at 86. George Reeves, Superman on television, died of a gunshot wound, and Christopher Reeve, Superman in the 1978 movie, died of complications from paralysis caused by a fall from a horse.

     The fictional but timeless characters—James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and Frankenstein—still live on.

     Paul Johnson made a good point in Heroes when he said that the real heroes are the wives of famous men. “History,” he wrote, “is crowded with unsung heroines, wives of celebrated but difficult men, who promoted their husbands’ interests, put up with their rages, depressions, and vanities, comforted them in bad times, and remained in the background during moments of glory.”

     Question: “What is the wife of a saint called?” Answer: “A martyr.”

     Paul Johnson asked another question: “’How many more people would Julius Caesar have killed, if his assassins had failed?’ Napoleon killed five times as many as Caesar’s total, perhaps five million. Mao Tse-tung, another admirer of Caesar, killed seventy million. These things need to be weighed when we tell stories of heroes.”

Flattery and Shakespeare

by William H. Benson

June 29, 2017

     On July 9, 1850, Millard Fillmore, the Vice-President, became the thirteenth President of the United States, after the twelfth President, Zachary Taylor, died of cholera. On the day Fillmore took the oath of office, he fired every member of Taylor’s Cabinet because he “resented the way that they had ignored him when he was vice-president. Two months passed before he approved a new cabinet.”

     Last February, Jeff Jacoby, a columnist for the Boston Globe, wrote that Fillmore “plunged the White House and the Whig Party into turmoil,” because he was attracted “to oddball political movements, conspiracy theories, and ethnic hatred.” He displayed open hostility toward free trade and Irish immigrants, but supported slavery, although he was from New York, a northern state.

     Fillmore’s most appalling decision was to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, a law that allowed federal officials “to hunt escaped slaves and return them to bondage. In a Pennsylvania case, the President charged forty-one Americans with treason because they refused to join a slave-catching posse.”

     In the 1852 presidential election, the Whigs lost by a landslide, and the fractured Whig Party collapsed and was extinguished from American politics forever. In 1856, Fillmore ran for president as  the Know-Nothing party’s candidate. Their slogan, “Americans must rule America.” He lost.

     Jacoby began his column, “History doesn’t repeat itself. But it has an unnerving tendency to rhyme.” Jacoby suggests that our current president is governing as Millard Fillmore did.

     One can remember though that as time moves forward, the issues, ideas, personalities, laws, and cultures change. What was the case in 1850 is not the same as in 2017. No one can step into the same water in the same river twice. History may rhyme or resonate rather than repeat itself.

     To equate a living person with a historical character—who once lived and is now departed—is one thing, but it is more difficult to equate a living person with a fictional character, even one based upon a historical figure.

     At Trump’s recent full cabinet meeting, while the cameras were rolling, each secretary, plus the vice-president, spoke of their over-the-top loyalty to the president. A Toronto citizen commented on Twitter, “This is actually the start of King Lear.”

     Indeed, Shakespeare’s King Lear asked each of his three daughters to tell him how much they loved him, so that he could decide how much of his estate he would give to each. Two daughters, Goneril and Regan, flatter him and profess their devotion, but the youngest daughter, Cordelia, refuses and says, “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond; no more nor less.” Cordelia’s honest answer so shocks Lear that he banishes her.

     He then divides his estate between Goneril and Regan, who then take all that their father owns and drive him out onto the heath on a stormy night, where he shouts at the wind.

     A writer for the Economist said, “No secretary quite filled the role of Cordelia, the princess who refused to flatter King Lear,” and “Lear confuses flowery words with love,” and “Mr. Trump is no King Lear, whose choleric old age was preceded by a long and fruitful reign.”

     On the same day that Trump conducted his televised cabinet meeting, Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar opened at “Shakespeare in the Park” in New York City’s Central Park. Instead of a Roman toga, this Julius Caesar “sports a blond wig and a suit and too-long [red] tie, sends tweets from a golden bathtub, and is brutally stabbed to death by a group of women and minorities.” The blood on the stage dismayed the corporate sponsors, who then reconsidered their support.

     One critic insisted that “portraying the assassination of the American president as a righteous blow for justice is an offense to decency,” and it was. The Economist‘s writer said, “Donald Trump is not a Julius Caesar. Instead he is a boastful, thin-skinned praise-addict. He knew full well that his cabinet officials were flattering him, and he relished their humiliation. He is more bully than tragic hero.”

     Our current president does not match one hundred percent Millard Fillmore’s performance, nor does he match Shakespeare’s dramatic characters, King Lear or Julius Caesar. There is no allegory, typology, or symbolism here. The president is what he is, does what he does, and tweets what he tweets, and in that, he needs no help from history or literature, neither of which he reads.

     The historical past fails to foretell the future, and the same is often true of centuries-old literature, including Shakespeare’s plays. As for cabinet secretaries who humiliate themselves by flattering the president with questionable adulation, it reminds me of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s attitude, that when flattery is required, there is no excess.

The Bloody American Revolution

by William H. Benson

June 15, 2017

     On the morning of June 17, 1775, in Boston, British army officers stared up in amazement across the Charles River to Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill, north of Charlestown. “The night before, Charlestown peninsula had been a green, unpeopled knob. Now it swarmed with men.” During the night, New England’s colonial militia had dug into the two hills and were ready to fight.

     The British general, Thomas Gage, chose force, a frontal attack “to storm the rebel entrenchments,” so that all of Boston would witness in action England’s army, Europe’s most powerful.

      That hot afternoon, General William Howe and three thousand British regulars crossed the Charles River and landed on the peninsula. Howe addressed his Redcoats, “You must drive these farmers from the hill or it will be impossible for us to remain in Boston.”

     With Howe in front, the Redcoats advanced up Breed’s Hill, until they were within fifty yards of the rebels. Then, “A hail of buck-shot from ancient hunting guns struck the attackers.” The British fell back to the river, reformed their lines, and advanced up the hill a second time. Again, the rebels fired, and the Redcoats fell back. A third time they reformed their lines, and climbed the hill. By then, the rebels had run out of ammunition and were forced to retreat from Breed’s Hill.

     A century and a half later, Winston Churchill wrote, “The rebels had become heroes. They had stood up to trained troops. The British had captured the hill, but the Americans had won the glory. On both sides of the Atlantic, men perceived that a mortal struggle impended.”

     The casualties appalled everyone: 226 British soldiers and officers killed, 828 wounded; and 115 colonists killed, 305 wounded. On a single afternoon. “John Adams’s friend, Joseph Warren, was shot through the face, his body horribly mutilated by British bayonets.” “Throughout that night carriages and chaises bore the English casualties into Boston.”

     One historian said, “Something intangible died in the British command on that June afternoon. No officer who witnessed the slaughter could ever get the memory out it out of his mind.”

     A year passed. On June 28, 1776, in South Carolina’s harbor at Charleston, ten British warships and thirty transports, all commanded by Sir Henry Clinton, launched an attack on the colonists, who were positioned behind earthworks on the beach. The unhurried colonists aimed their cannon balls at one ship after another, and when ammunition ran low, the colonists rushed in with fresh supplies.

     The British returned fire, but their shots slammed into the earthworks. Soon, the ships’ “hulls showed ragged gaps; masts splintered and crashed overboard; decks were swept by cannon balls and small-arms fire; gun crews and their officers were struck down at their posts.”

     One officer on the H.M.S. Bristol said, “No slaughterhouse could present so bad a sight with blood and entrails lying about, as did our ship.”

     Breed’s Hill in Boston and Charleston harbor in South Carolina sobered the British. They realized that the rag-tag militia, the so-called “farmers” that they had scorned, had the will and means to fight.

     Holger Hoock, the British historian at the University of Pittsburgh, published last month his book, “Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth.” In it, he focused on the carnage, violence, and “blood-soaked fields” that the American Revolutionary War unleashed. Breed’s Hill and Charleston’s harbor were not unusual, according to Hoock, who recounts numerous other “Narratives of atrocity.”

     King George III and his troops believed that Adams, Jefferson, Washington, and the others were not American patriots, but Englishmen who had committed treason. As a result, “Captured rebels were not treated as prisoners of war, whose care was governed by established international norms, but rather as traitors ‘destined to the cord,’” and a hanging.

     Benjamin Franklin said, “We must indeed all hang together, or we shall all hang separately.”

     The Patriots drove out the Loyalists, who lost their farms, houses, and businesses, and were forced to flee to Canada. The rebellion divided communities and families. For example, Benjamin Franklin never forgave his Loyalist son, William Franklin. The two were estranged, their relations embittered.

     By Ben’s will, he left William some land in Nova Scotia and his books and papers, and said, “The part he acted against me in the late war, which is of public notoriety, will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavo[u]red to deprive me of.”

     The American Revolutionary War. The Patriots shed their bled and died, and they seized Loyalists’ property. It was a chaotic, frenzied time. It was an all-out war, with no room for neutrality. The Patriots fought this bloody war for the right to govern and tax themselves, to create a new nation, and to declare their independence.

George Orwell

by William H. Benson

June 1, 2017

     On June 8, 1949, the English author George Orwell published his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. His book continues to startle and warn readers of the dangers of totalitarian governments, and it also identifies what a society will lose once the tyrant denounces intellectual liberty.

     Orwell’s main character is Winston Smith, who works in the Ministry of Truth, where he revises the historical records to ensure that the past conforms to Big Brother’s ever-changing set of false statistics. Winston also deletes all references to “unpersons,” those that the Party has “vaporized” or eliminated. The victim has not only disappeared, he or she never existed.

     Orwell attached an Appendix to the novel, and in it he explained “Newspeak,” the Inner Party’s attempt to control and limit people’s language. The Party divided language into three vocabularies. The “A” words included those “needed for the business of everyday life, for eating, drinking, and working.”

     The “B” words were compounded words, like “goodthink,” “crimethink,” “doublethink,” “oldthink, and “oldspeak.” Each was a shorthand version of a former idea. For example, Orwell writes, “concepts of liberty and equality were contained in the single word crimethink, and concepts of objectivity and rationalism were contained in the single word oldthink.”

     “Words such as honor, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, science, and religion had simply ceased to exist. A few blanket words covered them, and in covering them abolished them. Greater precision would have been dangerous.”

     The “C” words “consisted of scientific and technical terms.”

     By “Newspeak” and its three vocabularies, the Inner Party dumbed-down people’s skill with language. “The expression of unorthodox opinions was well-nigh impossible. It would have been possible to say, ‘Big Brother is ungood,’ but the necessary words beyond that were no longer available. Its words growing fewer and fewer, their meanings more and more rigid.”

     Big Brother achieved total control by changing historical records, and by diminishing language.

     In Orwell’s 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” he points out how our language has declined. He provides five short quotes, and then says that “two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English, and of any political writing.”  

     Bureaucrats write now by “gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.” For example, a party official might say, “In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that,” rather than say, “I think.”

     Orwell writes that the English language “becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” “Political writing is bad writing.” If it is good writing, then “the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line.’ Orthodoxy seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style.”

     In his essay, “Prevention of Literature,” also published in 1946, Orwell argues that the bureaucrats who attack intellectual liberty “always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism.” In other words, they see the free-thinker as a single rebel, a heretic, without party affiliation, who needs his or her thinking corrected, and then brought back into the fold. “The issue of truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background.”

     How does a rebel vanquish a Big Brother, a tyrant, a dictator, an Inner Party? Orwell says that it begins with language, with intellectual liberty, and courage. He quotes a Revivalist hymn: “Dare to be a Daniel. Dare to stand alone. Dare to have a purpose firm. Dare to make it known.”

     The world’s Big Brothers need scientists, lawyers, statisticians, economists, officious clerks, middle managers, generals, lieutenants, and foot soldiers. They may even need easily-bent journalists willing to write the party’s line, but they do not need writers who recognize the truth, and who use Anglo-Saxon words to describe the tyrant’s actions. “He did this.” “She said that.” “This is what I saw.”

     Tyrants do not need historians who base their histories upon facts, upon credible evidence, on eye witness accounts, on testimonies, and on impartial written documents. The historian is like the little child who tells true tales of what happened to whoever will listen, and who dares to open the closet door and point at the skeletons dangling in the closet.

     The Inner Party scared people with the words, “Big Brother is watching you,” but Winston Smith, alone in his dingy apartment, wrote in his diary the “crimethought” words, “Down with Big Brother.”

     June 6, 1944, D-Day, the day the Allies began their assault upon Europe’s Axis powers.

To the Graduates

by William H. Benson

May 18, 2017

     On August 10, 1979, there appeared in the New York Times, Woody Allen’s article, “My Speech to the Graduates.” He began, “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” Here we see on full display Woody Allen’s sense of humor.

     The comedian’s article is a parody of the standard commencement speech. He refuses to repeat the oft-repeated platitudes: “Don’t be afraid to fail.” “Remember that you are the future.” “Always appreciate your parents.” “Enjoy this time in your life.” “Follow your dreams.” “Never stop learning.”

     Instead, he adopts a tongue-in-cheek approach. He says, “We realize that science has failed us.” “Religion too has unfortunately let us down.” “The trouble is, our leaders have not adequately prepared us for a mechanized society,” and, “Instead of facing these challenges, we turn instead to distractions.” Although his words sound serious, his mood is light and funny, as he turns each cliché on its head.

     Today, the most overused word in the English language is “perfect.” We hear the words often, “That is perfect!” Yet, except for perhaps calculus, most things in life are not perfect.

     Raising kids, teaching kids, passing laws, winning the Super Bowl, taking our case to court, winning a Presidential election, declaring and conducting a war, and forging an independent life are all messy affairs. Nothing about any of them is perfect. It is haphazard, slipshod, go-along in order to get-along. Life is more messy than perfect.

     To the graduate, I say, surrender “perfect,” and instead adopt a “try to achieve” approach.”

     You may have heard it said, “Strengthen your emotional intelligence: your resilience, initiative, optimism, and adaptability.” Those are big words, but how do you do that? One way is to try a really hard thing, just for a short time.

     Try cold-call selling at the door or on the telephone. Work in a slaughter house. Ask to give a speech. Study a hard foreign language, like Japanese. Take an evening class in trigonometry. Write a thousand-word essay.  No doubt you will stumble and fail, but you will discover inside of you untapped and unknown reservoirs of strength, energy, and will power that will astonish you and your friends.

     Also, try to find smart people at work, at play, at home, and talk with them. But how can you know if someone is smart? Smart people welcome others, they make people around them feel great, and they accomplish the impossible.

     The fictional Forrest Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.” He meant that if a person does a series of stupid things, he or she is stupid, no matter his or her intelligence quotient. Consider Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber. In his early twenties, he achieved a PhD in mathematics, but then he decided to mail bombs to unsuspecting people. Not very smart.

     Ignorant people are so self-absorbed that they do not know the effect they have upon other people. They play cruel tricks, manipulate, dominate, and stun others by their merciless actions. Avoid those who make you feel awful inside. A quote I read, “On occasion, we have to see the good in ‘good-bye.’”

     Last week in the New York Times, the British novelist Penelope Lively said, “I have six grandchildren, in their early twenties, and I look at them now and think they’re making the sort of decisions that are going to determine the rest of their lives. It’s quite alarming.”

     She is correct, but people also can take control of their life at any age and redirect it to where they want it to go, in order to try and achieve something grand, whether in their forties, sixties, or eighties. If, in your twenties, you made a decision that you now regret, I say, try to achieve something else. 

     Also, limit your choices. Too many, and we feel overwhelmed. Too few, and we feel slighted.

     One psychologist said, “We are biologically unprepared for the number of choices we face in the modern world. People worry that once they make a choice, they should have chosen a different one. Repeated tests have shown that people are more satisfied when they have less choices, even when the quality is not as good.”    

     Life is less than perfect. Often it is messy. But it is our life, and it is a work-in-progress.

     Woody Allen concluded his speech to the graduates. “Summing it up, it is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get home by six o’clock.”

     To the graduates of 2017, congratulations. Well done. You are now free to try to achieve something else.