It’s a gross
oversimplification, I know, but in general terms the political ‘right’ tends to
see history in terms of the doings of ‘great men’ – and they are almost all
men – whilst the political ‘left’ sees things more in terms of wider historical
forces resulting from the context of the times. To make it more specific, the traditional ‘right’
has a tendency to see Hitler as uniquely evil (even if the more modern right suffers from a degree of revisionism on the question) and Churchill as the great hero
who fought him off, whereas the ‘left’ would tend to see both as being the
product of their times. In more recent history, the elimination of the leaders
of Hamas by Israel, or of Islamic State by the US, strongly implies that both
of those powers believe that the problem they are trying to address lies with
the individuals, not with their followers or the populations more generally.
The ability of such movements to regroup after the loss of a leader might lead
some to say that it’s a strategy that has been shown not to work, but there
seems little sign of any realisation of that fact in Israel or the US.
In one sense, it
doesn’t hugely matter; the events were the same, regardless of which
interpretation one adheres to. But there is another sense in which it matters
greatly. If, shall we say, Hitler had been assassinated (or had merely fallen
under a bus) in the early 1930s, would that have avoided the holocaust and the
second world war, or would the nature of German politics at the time simply
have thrown up another character to perform a similar role, with maybe a few
minor differences? We only live history once, so can never be certain, but the
difficulty with believing that it’s all down to individuals is that the ‘elimination’
of those individuals can become morally acceptable – or even a moral imperative,
for some – if it saves vastly more lives than it costs. Indeed, that is the
justification used, even if not always expressed so clearly, by successive US
administrations for some of their actions and decisions.
That brings me to
the modern-day phenomenon which is Trump. He may indeed be uniquely stupid in
his understanding of geography, economics, and science, to name just three
important areas of policy. His one obvious ability, somewhat surprisingly given
his mangling of language, syntax, and meaning (to say nothing of his propensity
for outright untruths) is that he communicates effectively with, and appeals
to, a large section of the US electorate. That statement may say more about
that section of the electorate than about Trump himself, but that doesn’t alter
the truth of the statement. Looking at the people around him, all the evidence
suggests that if he were to fall under a bus – or merely suffer the consequences
of his increasing age – any replacement would be just as bad. Or, maybe, even
worse – some of them might even be able to articulate a rationale of sorts for
the actions being taken.
It's easy to fall
into the trap of seeing an individual as the problem: remove the individual and
the problem goes away. But the real problem is that 77 million US citizens
voted for him. Historical forces rather than individuals. No-one can really say
that they didn’t know what they were voting for; he was clear about that, even
if some people chose to assume that he didn’t mean much of it. Eliminating the
man at the top, or simply hoping that demographic trends will do that in a more
natural way, doesn’t address the fact that those 77 million supported him.
There is no reason to suppose that a strategy of ‘decapitation’ would work any
better in a supposed democracy than it does for a ‘terrorist’ organisation.
The situation in the
UK isn’t yet as stark, but some of the same trends can be seen. People, in
increasing numbers, are turning their backs on the values of the Enlightenment,
on the findings of science, and on the idea of objective truth. I don’t know
what the answer is, or even if there is one. I’m pretty certain, though, that
it isn’t doing what seems to be happening, which is trying to appeal to that same
group of people, sometimes even labelling their concerns ‘legitimate’.
Upholding truth and science in the face of growing ignorance and an increase in
wild conspiracy theories requires rather more than that.
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