As the dullest electoral primary season in recent history is effectively over (but for the breathless media reports, widespread hand-wringing culminating in the national conventions/infomercials), real attention has disproportionally shifted to the geriatric general election (with its breathless media reports and widespread hand-wringing). In particular, I know a fair number of folks who are distraught (not unreasonably) at the prospect of the return of he-who-shall-not-be-named.
With that perspective in mind, I have been wondering why this prospective disaster-in-the-making is different from some other historical precedents.
We rarely can predict the future with any degree of confidence. Looming disasters/slow-motion train wrecks including the US Civil War, or WWI, or WWII, were amply foreseen, but only vaguely or conceptually. The natures of those calamities, not to mention their outcomes, were in line with the views of only a few prognosticators; even more so, their aftermaths. In each case, horrors, shocks, and destruction set the stage for periods of amazing growth and activity. History has no straight lines.
In my work as a teacher of the history of democracy, I use many examples of the erratic course of “progress.” The promise of the post US Civil War amendments for Black people was repeatedly dashed by the deep inertia of racism legally, politically, and culturally. Weimar Germany morphed into Nazi Germany. The French Revolution was, famously, a decades-long ping-pong match between radicals (of various flavors), moderates (of various flavors), and monarchists (ditto). Even to take a current situation, there’s a potential future history of 21C US politics in which the 2016-2020 era is a fluke, washed out of significance within a decade. (Yes, there’s also a scenario in which the Biden era is seen as the last flailing gasp of mainstream politics as the country/world swirls around the drain). We just don’t know.
I’ve been doing some research lately about what has to be one of the most remarkable flip-flops of political structure/culture (certainly in European history, if not globally): the mid-17C Civil War which led to a British republic.
Frustration with a politically clumsy King (Charles I) led to armed conflicts in 1640s England, Scotland, and Ireland (not yet formally combined into the United Kingdom) between Royalist forces and a Puritan-led Parliament. Disputes mainly centered on an overbearing and increasingly authoritarian state, taxation without consent, and a bewildering variety of religious differences. (Voltaire later remarked, with a pithy double-back-handed compliment, that “England has 42 religions, but only two sauces.”) Parliament raised an army to fight the King, but lost control of this “New Model” Army which became its own political forces, eventually leading to the capture and execution of the King (1649). Oliver Cromwell, a minor provincial figure who had risen to command of the Parliamentary Army became “Lord Protector”, but Parliament was pretty ineffective and he (and, briefly, his son) ruled until things fell apart and, by popular demand, the monarchy was reinstated in 1660 under Charles II.
Charles II and his brother James II ruled until 1689 when the latter’s pro-Catholic policies proved too much for the English and he fled to France. This “Glorious Revolution” led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy with a dominant Parliament that looks a lot like the structure of British government through the 20C.
What do I take from this (much-abbreviated) story?
First, the see-sawing of power between conflicting philosophies and parties and structures. The French Revolution, which began a century later, produced its own version of this swinging back-and-forth. Both were dramatic illustrations of the futility of long-term prediction and the power of contingency. There were times of great turmoil and danger and then things settled down. Virtually every party and outlook had, at various times, reasons to rejoice and feel triumphant, only to shortly find themselves with the short end of the stick politically-speaking.
Second, the road to our current political culture (a global version of liberal democracy) was far from assured. It could easily have been truncated (if Charles I and James II had been more moderate, they could have maintained a vibrant monarchy for some time) or, alternatively, have been radically accelerated. There were active groups in the late 1640s that proposed structures of power and principles that would have been recognizable to American and French Revolutionaries a century-and-a-half later. Indeed, it was the “republicans” (Cromwell et al.) who did more to suppress these proposals than the royalists of the day.
So, in terms of our current predicament, there is reason to fear, but not likely—on the history—reason to despair. Things may turn out well or badly—but, we have no idea today.
It is fair to ask, beyond this framing, whether the nature of modernity, and in particular, legal/social structures, the disintermediation of social media, and the sticky nature of the degradation of the global climate, makes such analogies from history irrelevant. Could well be.
Still, there is no basis to crumble into a small puddle. The Levelers of mid-17C England would have seen their ideas of voting power and equality embodied by most countries in the world by the 20C. The world’s most powerful hereditary power structure is a small, bleak country in East Asia and the Bourbons, Windsors, etc. are consigned to shadow plays of performance art. After Weimar fell, the “thousand-year-Reich” lasted only a bit more than one decade. This is not to dismiss the darkness that occurred during the down-cycles. Nor is there any reason to think that democracy is assured by some simplistic reading of “human progress.”
There is work to be done.
With that perspective in mind, I have been wondering why this prospective disaster-in-the-making is different from some other historical precedents.
We rarely can predict the future with any degree of confidence. Looming disasters/slow-motion train wrecks including the US Civil War, or WWI, or WWII, were amply foreseen, but only vaguely or conceptually. The natures of those calamities, not to mention their outcomes, were in line with the views of only a few prognosticators; even more so, their aftermaths. In each case, horrors, shocks, and destruction set the stage for periods of amazing growth and activity. History has no straight lines.
In my work as a teacher of the history of democracy, I use many examples of the erratic course of “progress.” The promise of the post US Civil War amendments for Black people was repeatedly dashed by the deep inertia of racism legally, politically, and culturally. Weimar Germany morphed into Nazi Germany. The French Revolution was, famously, a decades-long ping-pong match between radicals (of various flavors), moderates (of various flavors), and monarchists (ditto). Even to take a current situation, there’s a potential future history of 21C US politics in which the 2016-2020 era is a fluke, washed out of significance within a decade. (Yes, there’s also a scenario in which the Biden era is seen as the last flailing gasp of mainstream politics as the country/world swirls around the drain). We just don’t know.
I’ve been doing some research lately about what has to be one of the most remarkable flip-flops of political structure/culture (certainly in European history, if not globally): the mid-17C Civil War which led to a British republic.
Frustration with a politically clumsy King (Charles I) led to armed conflicts in 1640s England, Scotland, and Ireland (not yet formally combined into the United Kingdom) between Royalist forces and a Puritan-led Parliament. Disputes mainly centered on an overbearing and increasingly authoritarian state, taxation without consent, and a bewildering variety of religious differences. (Voltaire later remarked, with a pithy double-back-handed compliment, that “England has 42 religions, but only two sauces.”) Parliament raised an army to fight the King, but lost control of this “New Model” Army which became its own political forces, eventually leading to the capture and execution of the King (1649). Oliver Cromwell, a minor provincial figure who had risen to command of the Parliamentary Army became “Lord Protector”, but Parliament was pretty ineffective and he (and, briefly, his son) ruled until things fell apart and, by popular demand, the monarchy was reinstated in 1660 under Charles II.
Charles II and his brother James II ruled until 1689 when the latter’s pro-Catholic policies proved too much for the English and he fled to France. This “Glorious Revolution” led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy with a dominant Parliament that looks a lot like the structure of British government through the 20C.
What do I take from this (much-abbreviated) story?
First, the see-sawing of power between conflicting philosophies and parties and structures. The French Revolution, which began a century later, produced its own version of this swinging back-and-forth. Both were dramatic illustrations of the futility of long-term prediction and the power of contingency. There were times of great turmoil and danger and then things settled down. Virtually every party and outlook had, at various times, reasons to rejoice and feel triumphant, only to shortly find themselves with the short end of the stick politically-speaking.
Second, the road to our current political culture (a global version of liberal democracy) was far from assured. It could easily have been truncated (if Charles I and James II had been more moderate, they could have maintained a vibrant monarchy for some time) or, alternatively, have been radically accelerated. There were active groups in the late 1640s that proposed structures of power and principles that would have been recognizable to American and French Revolutionaries a century-and-a-half later. Indeed, it was the “republicans” (Cromwell et al.) who did more to suppress these proposals than the royalists of the day.
So, in terms of our current predicament, there is reason to fear, but not likely—on the history—reason to despair. Things may turn out well or badly—but, we have no idea today.
It is fair to ask, beyond this framing, whether the nature of modernity, and in particular, legal/social structures, the disintermediation of social media, and the sticky nature of the degradation of the global climate, makes such analogies from history irrelevant. Could well be.
Still, there is no basis to crumble into a small puddle. The Levelers of mid-17C England would have seen their ideas of voting power and equality embodied by most countries in the world by the 20C. The world’s most powerful hereditary power structure is a small, bleak country in East Asia and the Bourbons, Windsors, etc. are consigned to shadow plays of performance art. After Weimar fell, the “thousand-year-Reich” lasted only a bit more than one decade. This is not to dismiss the darkness that occurred during the down-cycles. Nor is there any reason to think that democracy is assured by some simplistic reading of “human progress.”
There is work to be done.
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