Politicians Should Not Be Cult Figures
Should any human be considered a savior?
I’ve always chuckled at those hysterical fans in A Hard Day’s Night, crying, shouting, convulsing. Those fans are now most likely in their late sixties and seventies. Though younger, and still a huge fan, I know I would not be on the front lines worshipping any mortal.
I’m too much of a skeptic.
The same goes with politics. When I was present at a Democratic Debate in New Hampshire to help assist (with driving only) my teenage daughter in her C-SPAN video documentary, I walked the front lines of Camp Bernie and Camp Hillary.
Both camps were corralled in yellow police tape; both camps shouting slogans and counter-slogans, holding signs high. What drove these supporters to Manchester at nine o’clock on a dreadfully cold night?
Later, safe and warm at a pub, I watched more political rallies on TV on the Republican side. And it was much of the same: the colors change, from blue to red, like gang colors on different turf, but the behavior is much the same.
“It’s pretty crazy up here during campaign season,” the bartender said. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s time for another Guinness!”
I understand the need to believe. I can trust my wife, my daughters, a neighbor, a few friends, some family members, but politicians or musicians or generals or actors or ministers? Would they make me stand in the cold, shouting chants, gazing for just a glance of that face, that hand, that smile?
Why, do others, I wonder?
Sure, there are politicians I admire, mostly from the past. And, perhaps, one or two, maybe, like right now. Even in 2020.
Sure, there are musicians and authors, and painters I would love to have dinner with. Or share a pint. Or better yet: jam with on stage or critique my newest story. But on equal terms.
Why should I bow to another human?
Many, however, succumb to the trappings of power. The crowds cheered for Alexander the Great. Caesar. Napoleon. Andrew Jackson. All promises of riches and national pride.
The crowds gathered too in the local towns along the Mississippi for the Duke and the Dauphin, two “royalty figures” in Huck Finn who promised great entertainment but were actually “confidence men.” A fool and his money, they say. And Mark Twain, a fellow skeptic, an author so many educators fear to teach, saw the weakness of humans in a mad rush to believe in a savior.
It’s easy for con men to trick. Read Melville’s The Confidence Man. Or Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. Or Roth’s The Plot Against America.
I was tricked too when I was only eighteen by a crafty telemarketer, who conned me into an enticing travel package. He played upon my desires to take the woman I was in love with on a much-discounted voyage.
“There must be someone you would love to take?”
And there was. One month later, however, I partially paid for a voyage never taken. That woman was also a mirage. Working as a busboy, this boy had a painful, expensive lesson, but a lesson never forgotten. Trust only a handful. That knock on the door or that politician on the screen or that innocent phone call may be a warning: run away!
My grandfather was also a skeptic. He once told me a story. My mom’s friend was top in his class at Bartram High School in Philadelphia. My grandfather, a gifted storyteller, convinced him through specific detail, “facts” so vivid they had to be real, that he was an actual Venusian. The lies just had to be real. After all, my grandfather trustworthy. How could he be lying? Why would he lie? My mom’s friend was heartbroken to discover my grandfather was not an actual alien.
And then he told me that many educated men followed Hitler. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, ministers. Underneath Hitler and around Hitler there were thousands of mini-Hitlers, sycophants, all too willing to serve.
Why? The list of sins, and faulty logic, is not endless, but many.
And many more millions who just wanted to get to work and raise a family while the world as they knew it crumbled. So many wanted to believe. The megalomaniac gave them hope when hope seemed as far away as the next loaf of bread.
But we need to look behind the green curtain. That wizard may not be a wizard at all, and we mortals may all just be fools, like Shakespeare’s Puck told us we’d be, placing blind faith in someone else’s dirty hands.
Do we have the power to say, wait, perhaps I’ve been tricked all along? Do we have the courage? Do we have a belief in ourselves?
Let’s examine our own hands, believe in facts and logic, with a strong dose of self-reliance and community love, and work from there.
And if you have to wave a flag, place your own family up there. I’m sure some company places family photos on flags. That I can respect.
At least that won’t give me nightmares of history gone terribly wrong.
You can watch my daughter’s award-winning documentary on C-SPAN here: “When The House Becomes a Home” about term limits.
Thank you for reading! Follow me on Medium at Walter Bowne and on Spotify at “Down with Bowne” and “Liberating the Educator” and on YouTube at Walter Bowne “Down with Bowne.”
