by Tom Kando
The prevailing trend today is to favor “freedom,” and to hate the government, particularly the big, distant, central government. “Local” and “grassroots” are seen as good things, going hand in hand with “freedom.”
Popular culture is also on that side, of course, as I was recently reminded by the wildly popular Mockingjay, the third Hunger Games movie. It’s not my intent to dignify this mediocre picture with a review or a serious political analysis, as it is essentially a money-making piece of entertainment, which is fine. But it shows precisely the ideological confusion which I want to talk about:
The main theme of the entire Hunger Games series is that of an evil central government (Capitol) that oppresses the local districts, which then start a revolution. It is a story about the quest for freedom at the grassroots level vs. the tyranny of the central government. As banal as could be. The story of every revolution in history - the American, the French, the Russian, you name it.
Hollywood has always depicted rebellion and revolution as noble causes, as fights against some evil, remote, imperial, power. Think of the Star Wars series, or every movie ever made about the Roman Empire. In the most popular film ever made, Gone with the Wind, even the Southern secession is depicted as a heroic quest for freedom from an oppressive federal government.
Obviously, central governments can be imperial and tyrannical. I am not going to make a list of such regimes, which would include the Soviet Union, the Aztec empire and many others. Of course.
But surely this issue cannot be disposed of categorically? Each case must be judged individually.
Take that “evil Roman empire,” depicted a million times by the likes of Cecil B. DeMille and Stanley Kubrick: what was the alternative back then? The freedom to live in mud huts surrounded by heaps of dung and bones? The freedom to destroy aqueducts that provided water to millions?
Those of us who went to gymnasium (the classical secondary school) and read Tacitus, Livy, Pliny, Cicero and the other great Romans, got a message quite different from current popular culture. That message was congruent with Edward Gibbon’s view of ancient Rome as the best thing that ever happened to humanity:
“If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus...” (Frank C. Bourne, A History of the Romans, p. 436).
The generic question is this: Is tribalism all that it’s cracked up to be? This is an important question today, because we live in a world where centrifugal forces are in the ascendency. Centralization has become a bad word.
This was not always so, not even during my own life: When I grew up, progress was equated with UNIFICATION, not fragmentation. I was a world-federalist, hoping that humanity was moving towards a one-world government, of which the United Nations were a preview. We understood that nationalism and ethnic tribalism were the evils which had led to catastrophic wars. The European UNION was the best thing that happened to Europe in two thousand years.
The 19th century had already been in the same mood. It was an optimistic century, animated by a belief in progress. Whether on the right (Herbert Spencer) or on the left (Karl Marx), everyone agreed that social evolution was UPWARD. It was an era of unification, as when dozens of tiny states unified to form large nations like Italy and Germany.
America was guided by the same mentality: The Union HAD to be preserved, no matter what, even at the cost of a bloody Civil War. Fragmentation was not an option.
Today, the wind is blowing in a different direction. During the 1990s, we had the horror of the Yugoslav split-up into half a dozen countries. Recently, Scotland was not quite stupid enough to secede from the United Kingdom. The Belgians want to separate. Catalonia is thinking of seceding, as are many other regions of Europe, as well as Quebec in Canada.
Secession has always been especially seductive to Americans, a people with anarchist tendencies. Lately, Northern Californians want to secede and form the Republic of Jefferson. Texans are always talking about secession. The entire Tea Party can be summed up as a paranoid anti-federal-government movement.
In the US, talk of secession, and equating that with “freedom,” becomes particularly absurd. There is nothing dictatorial about this country’s federal government, even considering the NSA’s information collection programs.
To the contrary, IN THIS COUNTRY, it is the federal government which has been the major force AGAINST oppression and injustice. From the Civil War to Ferguson, Civil Rights would have been in jeopardy without federal backup. In this country, States’ Rights and the right to secede meant the right to keep slaves. “Grassroots” justice meant the KKK and lynchings. Local autonomy has meant unpunished discrimination and police brutality. Not to mention the myriad federal programs without which the downtrodden would be even more destitute, without which science, education, the environment, public health, transportation and national security would languish, without which progress would be impossible.
A movie like Mockingjay will confuse naive young people. In it, a large proportion of the rebels are people of color, so as to make sure that we understand that the rebels are the oppressed people. Millennials could easily be seduced by the Tea Party’s anti-government siren song.
But such a scenario has no applicability to the US, where the central government is more likely to be a source of justice and progress than a source of oppression.
Its applicability elsewhere in the world is also questionable: In many areas, the need for security, stability, unification, economic justice and pooling of resources outweighs the need for tribal purity under the guise of “freedom.”
This is not to denigrate the seriousness of governmental oppression in many parts of the world - from Syria to Myanmar, from Russia to Egypt, from North Korea to Sudan. But in Western Europe and in North America, talk of secession makes little sense, and is in fact a cover for the DENIAL of freedom to some.
© Tom Kando 2014
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9 comments:
I think the movie succinctly illustrated in fiction a reality in society, that is that those in the "mudd huts" provide for more valuable resources such as wheat, grain, dairy, meat, vegetables building material, energy than those far overcompensated people crossroads of trade do like webpages, art, entertainment & currency. It almost seems inevitable as you see through History whether Rome, Aztecs, Tzars, Rajas or Chinese Emperors that those who benefit by trade & commerce increasingly at the expense of those who truly provide the truly indispensable needs that revolution will occur. In my own short life of 43 years I've seen a drastic decline in the quality of life from not just the rural communities in America but the non major cities & suburbs not centers of global trade. While the wealthy in the elite communities of Marthas Vinyard, Manhattan, Palace Verdes, Beverly Hills, Atherton & Tiburon are accumulating an ever increasing proportion of the wealth. The Mocking Jay salute was copied by protestors in Thailand & subsequently baned in Thailand because it strikes a chord throughout the world today. As one comedian from Kentucky put it, they (New York) need our beef & corn a lot more than we need their Latte's & funny Jewish film makers.
Support for large, centralized government provides only short-term stability; when the inevitable revolutions take place, they're marked by a high degree of violence. Higher degree of suppression of instability results in higher degrees of disturbance later. Instead, long-term stability in complex systems is best attained via frequent, small-scale volatility. Ancient city-states we're superior to modern, behemoth, top-down nation-states who are devoid of th hunger for "trial and error" from which improvement of complex systems stems.
Absence of "skin in the game," in our increasingly opaquely-played government which exerts power over people, bringing harm to many while escaping unscathed, makes our society fragile. Asymmetric risk/reward, or worse yet profit from catastrophe (politicians with jurisdiction over places they don't inhabit, warmongering men with no children going to war, environmental policy written far from the lands it impacts) leads to catastrophe. Accountability is key, and his is more easily achieved locally.
Roman law obliged all engineers to sleep under their newly-built bridges.
This is such a good read, as are all of your essays on your blog. I have to say, Dr. Kando was the best professor I have ever had, and I couldn't have had a better second reader when I did my MA thesis. Thanks, Professor Kando.
I thank Roy, anonymous and Mary for their comments. They make interesting points, and Mary is very kind.
Perhaps if everyone had to take sociology, we would understand how to build the perfect form of government (ha ha).
Great perspective piece! One of my favorites so far. And in a mausoleum somewhere, Tito thanks you!
Ancient Rome was also a more equitable society than the one we have today
About Scott's comment...
That's hard to say, but one difference that's always struck me is that with slavery in ancient Rome,there was at least the possibility of upward mobility, buying your freedom, manumission, etc. Many prominent Roman citizens were descendents of slaves.
With 19th-century slavery in the Western Hemisphere, it was (by and large): once a slave, always a slave. Much more of a caste system.
Enjoyable piece! I think that there is a way to reform or system to enable a better social world; I think that socialist countries have better societies in terms of their providing good healthcare and little crime. These two facts are enough to help most of us sleep better at night.
Gail
Gail is right.
Social democracy is the answer. Especially to deal with the problem of growing inequality (see Madeleine's December 6 post).
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