CSotD: The Low Spark of Quiet Zealotry
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There’s a lot of rebranding going around these days, as various organizations and individuals decide if they’re going to resist or surrender. Columbia has decided to behave itself and let the government dictate what they teach and what rules they set for their students, which is kind of funny given how well the fellow now in charge did when he tried to run his own university.
On the other hand, it’s not that funny if you remember the re-education camps that sprang up in the wake of the fall of Saigon half a century ago. We’ll get back to that, but it does strike a nerve in those of us who remember, which includes both those who fought there and liked the people and those of us who welcomed the boat people who escaped. And, of course, the refugees themselves.
Pointing out that Christ would be under suspicion in an authoritarian state is not all that original, particularly since he really was under suspicion in an authoritarian state. It’s an ancient antisemitic tradition to blame the Pharisees for his crucifixion but the fact is that there were those who cooperated with the Romans, or at least kept their heads down, and there were the Zealots who raised as much hell as they could get away with.
It’s hard at this distance to sort the antisemitism from the pragmatism, though it was the Romans who did all the crucifying, but, still, some people resist more than others and that hasn’t changed.
It has been interesting watching the resistance flare up where it can. Musk has all sorts of irons in the fire, but Tesla is his most vulnerable spot and the zealots have done a nice job of messing with him. Not only does it have potential to wound him, but it has offered real revelations in that Dear Leader has begun running car ads on the White House lawn and threatening to deport citizens who kick his dog.
Note that he claims boycotting Tesla is “illegal,” but we haven’t seen Kid Rock prosecuted for boycotting Bud Light or for vandalizing the brew. Render unto Trump the things that are Trump’s.
The benefit of public zealotry is that it reveals the flaws in the authoritarian system, and it certainly helps that Musk is willing to publicly declare his sociopathic tendencies and even brag of them. Obviously, there are those who admire his lack of empathy, because there always are and always have been those who mistake cruelty for strength.
Though as Hands points out, and news stories have affirmed, there is a point at which those who admired the false strength of thoughtless leadership find that the shoe is pinching their foot and begin to question things.
I’m reluctant to put too much faith in this disillusionment, because when Trump’s first trade war began to damage his support in the heartland, he found $2 billion in aid to offset things, and I note in the current flurry of cost-savings that he’s still able to spend every weekend golfing despite the cost, and to find money to pay El Salvador to house the victims of his xenophobic round-ups.
He finds money when he wants to. There’s nothing new in that: People in the Philippines may have gone hungry, but Imelda Marcos had 3,000 pairs of shoes.
Hands points out that Dear Leader threatens judges who displease him, but there’s a flaw in that approach, given that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has just enough zealotry in him to publicly rebuke Trump’s threats to the system.
So far, the judiciary has maintained not only some independence but a willingness to interpret the law as written and intended rather than as it serves Dear Leader’s personal goals.
Which makes it a shame that the three-legged stool built by the Founders appears to be one leg short of stability. Perhaps we’ll restore it in the mid-terms. If nothing else, there will be enough zealots left in the country to guarantee one more shot at democracy before we fold.
Visiting the Past
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and of Cambodia, and Paul Berge has a collection of cartoons from the era on his page.
In-Country, which cartoons about memories from the war, notes the approaching day of remembrance, which will be a week from now.
Coming, as I did, from a blue-collar town, it seemed half of my friends went off to college and half went off to Vietnam, and I appreciate the gentle tone of Fehrenbacher’s piece, recognizing that the smiling picture and the souvenir beads are offset by the bottle of pills.
I had friends who came home and went back to life, but I had several other friends whose lives were deeply damaged and never the same, and whose wives, a half-century later, still experience being awakened by their husband’s night terrors.
Ten years after the fall of Saigon, I played at a reunion of veterans and protesters, and in 1985, the political opportunists had not yet succeeded in dividing us. I sang protest songs and songs of the war, and the vets sang along, particularly, of course, with the Fish anthem.
Still one generation, we had lessons to teach, and willingness to learn.
I knew some boat people in the first years after the war and respected the horrors they had seen in their escape, while a friend had served with the Montagnards we later abandoned.
I also spent a lot of time with a Cambodian diplomat who received frequent reports from Thai refugee camps about the actions of the Khmer Rouge, which I heard him detail on the phone to Philip Habib, Undersecretary for Southeast Asian Affairs.
But we “didn’t know” what was happening there, despite my friend and his wife laughing over the errors in this Time article, and my having introduced him to a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Years later, I wrote about it to Ed Bradley, who had been a reporter in Vietnam and Cambodia.
I’ve since chalked it all up to the public’s right not to know.
Thank goodness not everyone has forgotten.
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