Thursday, December 04, 2008 Editorial: They've said it before
THERE is this passage in George Bernard Shaw's "Back to Methuselah" that sounds as if it was the ghost of yesterday booming right in our midst, jolting us to see what looms right in front of us.
The passage unearthed while in search of things to read in Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org -- a free online book project featuring thousands of books whose copyrights have expired) brought forth an image of what is happening today; an image depicted by words written 88 years ago.
"(T)hough there is no difference in this respect between the best demagogue and the worst, both of them having to present their cases equally in terms of melodrama, there is all the difference in the world between the statesman who is humbugging the people into allowing him to do the will of God, in whatever disguise it may come to him, and one who is humbugging them into furthering his personal ambition and the commercial interests of the plutocrats who own the newspapers and support him on reciprocal terms," Shaw wrote in "Political Opportunism in Excelsis," one of 49 essays in the preface of the five-part play.
Looking up "demagogue" in the dictionary, just for those who may not have seen its use for quite some time now, the word means "a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power" (Merriam Webster Online).
"Once produce an atmosphere of fatalism on principle, and it matters little what the opinions or superstitions of the individual statesmen concerned may be. A Kaiser who is a devout reader of sermons, a Prime Minister who is an emotional singer of hymns, and a General who is a bigoted Roman Catholic may be the executants of the policy; but the policy itself will be one of unprincipled opportunism; and all the Governments will be like the tramp who walks always with the wind and ends as a pauper, or the stone that rolls down the hill and ends as an avalanche: their way is the way to destruction," Shaw continues.
No wonder George Bernard Shaw is regarded as a class of his own. His book "Back to Methuselah" was published in 1921.
No wonder too that we have often been told to "pray for our nation" by our leaders instead of being given actionable courses. They are just, after all, preserving the "atmosphere of fatalism on principle."
Still most of us are just too comfortable with our present condition; we refuse to expose the demagogues among us as they truly are.
Now that we have opted to just sit down in comfort, not bothering to take part in the whole debate, may we always remember that the "tramp that walks away with the wind," and "the stone that rolls down the hill" is our government, too; a government walking and rolling its way to destruction if we, as a people and a nation, continue to tolerate the manner in which we are being governed.
