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« God Hates You Just Because | Main | The Five Horsemen of the Revolution » December 31, 2004The Strongman Always Rings TwiceHegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire. More than a handful of musicals and satires have used the figure of the military strongman or the junta as the target of their jokes. And what a target the president-for-life is, as he struts down the main promenade, his false medals glinting in the sun, his beautiful white uniform free of the grit and grime of his impoverished cities. Satire is most potent when it points out the gap between pretension and reality, and in few other systems are the gaps as wide as in the military dictatorship, which promises peace and prosperity and delivers the opposite. What is always most amusing to the outside observer is the absolute conviction of the despot that he alone can sail the ship of state. Eventually, he dies, or is disposed, or is destroyed, and the ship of state either rights itself or steams along under a newer, crueler captian. I wonder who finds the spectacle funniest: The outside world or the domestic population. The outside world doesn't suffer the depradations of the regime, but the domestic population will come to understand the tyrant in ways the outside world never does. But both populations--leaving aside, for instance, those in Russia and elsewhere who still respect and admire Stalin--will eventually realize the great hypocrisy at the core of all absolutist regimes.
Pakistan is officially a major non-NATO ally of the U.S. President Bush, who famously didn't know Musharraf's name when asked in a pop quiz in 1999, has overlooked the anti-democratic and anti-American actions of elements in the Musharraf regime (for instance, the actions of A.Q. Khan) because Pakistan is convenient to the major battlefields in the war on terror. And so now, because we need a trustworthy ally, we ally with someone who breaks his solemn oaths; because we fear terror, we aid a government whose members supply thoroughly nasty regimes with ghastly weapons; and because we praise democracy and civilian virtues, we work with a president who wears medals on his chest. History repeats itself twice--but this time, is it the tragedy, or the farce? Posted by Paul Musgrave at December 31, 2004 10:02 AM Comments |
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