Offering (for substantiation?) pictures of Churchill (who looks simultaneously constipated and impatiently in wait for his turn at the loo) and our boy Dubya, Shakespeare's Sister offers a link (Shakespeare's Sister: Smackdown) to a Carpetbagger Report post mocking young George for comparing himself to Winston Churchill. One supposes that the photograph of the constipated Churchill is intended to recall the mythical nature of the man, if at all white people need further reassurance of his towering status in their collective memory. If 9/11 is the event around which modern mythology is built (an immediate example is the "leadership" of "America's Mayor" Giuliani, a myth that this very "netroots" is unwilling to adopt), World War II is the equivalent for the recently aware -- those who are obsessed with making history than learning it.
The less fortunate who had to live that history (much as their modern contemporaries of "Giuliani Time") might remember a different man. And what they recall might substantiate Dubya's fantasy, albeit in an unflattering light. The similarities between the man who held that one should feel no queasiness in gassing "uncivilised tribes" (Iraq) and the fool who went back there looking for some (chemical weapons) can be summarized by that one nation-destroying adventure. But why stop? John Lukacs (Boston Globe) introduces us to Churchill thus (while still subscribing to the myth of the man):
As the agents behind Bush stoked civil unrest between rival religion factions, so did his white colonialist ancestor, who approvingly encouraged Muslim-Hindu tension, astutely gathering that "that is all to the good". That Bush is largely illiterate saves him the honour of such a record as Churchill's "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion". And if Bush's fellow conservatives question the intelligence of Katrina victims (black) or the growth of minority populations (Hispanic), no doubt they derive inspiration from Churchill's analysis of the Bengal famine victims: "Indians breeding like rabbits".
Winston Churchill was defeated by a person he described as a "half-naked fakir", a pacifist and humanist who wrote that "we must become the change we want to see in the world". It may be futile to expect today's "progressives", who consider such notions "New Age pap", to therefore heed such advice: why "become" when you have already arrived?
The less fortunate who had to live that history (much as their modern contemporaries of "Giuliani Time") might remember a different man. And what they recall might substantiate Dubya's fantasy, albeit in an unflattering light. The similarities between the man who held that one should feel no queasiness in gassing "uncivilised tribes" (Iraq) and the fool who went back there looking for some (chemical weapons) can be summarized by that one nation-destroying adventure. But why stop? John Lukacs (Boston Globe) introduces us to Churchill thus (while still subscribing to the myth of the man):
Winston Churchill had a very long political career. Until the 65th year of his life (1939) he had few successes and many failures.The similarities start there and follow fast and furious. Here is the early life of young Winston (source: History Learning Site):
Winston Churchill was born in 1874 into a wealthy and famous family. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill and he was the grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. He was schooled at Harrow where it is said that he only put his name on the exam entrance paper to get in.A conservative "Liberal" (at a time when the "free market" was still a liberal idea), his actions against workers and his use of the military offer examples of parallel malignancy:
As Home Secretary, Winston Churchill used troops to maintain law and order during a miners strike in South Wales. He also used a detachment of Scots Guards to assist police during a house siege in Sidney Street in East London in January 1911. Whilst such actions may have marked him down as a man who would do his utmost to maintain law and order, there were those who criticised his use of the military for issues that the police usually dealt with.As one struggles now with the failed project for a new American Empire ("spread democracy through the middle east"), the other struggled almost 80 years ago to keep together a crumbling old one (The idea of independence, or even self-government, for India, "fantastic ... criminally mischievous"). And keep it together at any and all costs, employing surprisingly similar rhetoric: [Without the British] "India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle ages".
As the agents behind Bush stoked civil unrest between rival religion factions, so did his white colonialist ancestor, who approvingly encouraged Muslim-Hindu tension, astutely gathering that "that is all to the good". That Bush is largely illiterate saves him the honour of such a record as Churchill's "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion". And if Bush's fellow conservatives question the intelligence of Katrina victims (black) or the growth of minority populations (Hispanic), no doubt they derive inspiration from Churchill's analysis of the Bengal famine victims: "Indians breeding like rabbits".
Winston Churchill was defeated by a person he described as a "half-naked fakir", a pacifist and humanist who wrote that "we must become the change we want to see in the world". It may be futile to expect today's "progressives", who consider such notions "New Age pap", to therefore heed such advice: why "become" when you have already arrived?
0 comments:
Post a Comment