ALMOST BLUE
I went to college not to be protected by “trigger warnings,” but to be exposed to a wider world and be challenged, whether by Plato conversing, by Galileo trying to introduce a new idea or by Camus finding, in Combat, a meaning. Probably the most wrenching example was in Professor Sam Beer’s course when we reached the rise of Hitler. How, I wondered, could a highly civilized country fall for a con man?
Although my family name is English, my Mom’s ancestors came, in the 19th century, from Berlin. Whether you looked at art and design, architecture, chemistry, drama, film, engineering, higher education, history, literature, manufacturing, medicine, music, philosophy, physics, and at a number of other fields, the German-speaking countries were not doing too shabbily. How could a great culture end up under the rule of the Nazis?
True, Germany had lost a world war. The country did have a vigorous Communist party to frighten business, and was located on the same continent as Stalin. Even worse, it experienced hyper-inflation. In hard times, it’s no doubt flattering to be told your “race” is masterful. Under Germany’s constitution, the President did suspend civil liberties after the Reichstag fire in 1933. But still....
Along with terrifying documentaries, Professor Beer showed us Leni Riefenstahl’s classic propaganda film, “Triumph of the Will.” Released in 1935, with Hitler by then in total control of Germany, the film centers on the previous year’s rally at Nuremberg, a spectacle that drew 700,000. Lose a war, wave a flag, stand in ranks, cheer a leader who vows to make the country grand again.
Dmitry Orlov grew up in what was then Leningrad before emigrating to the U.S. He’s an engineer and writer. He argues that his native country has been much better prepared for shocks and disappointments than his adopted country is. Author of Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, Orlov foresees collapse here, caused by huge military budgets, government deficits, and an unresponsive political system.
The American system is set up for success, not collapse. Unlike both Germany and the Soviet Union, we haven’t been invaded (with the exception of 1812). We’re taught to admire winners, who can never accumulate too much, and to resent providing a minimal “safety net” for those who don’t master the economic system. According to Orlov, we feel entitled to be known as the best in the world (or at least say we are). If this begins to be challenged by reality, we don't take it well and feel we’ve been misled.
Arguably, our system is not finding adequate responses to, or in some cases even engaging with, such challenges as ecological collapse, climate change (which some simply deny), the danger of nuclear war, or fantastic levels of both military spending and of debt.
To return to our original question, how could a highly civilized country fall for a con man? In 1935, the same year as Riefenstahl’s “Triumph,” there appeared the Sinclair Lewis novel, with an ironic title, It Can't Happen Here. Imagine a character who is “vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ‘ideas’ almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill.”
However, the real challenge is not a particular leader, but a false solution, one that can take other forms. According to Dmitry Orlov, deterioration is going to worsen; and according to Sinclair Lewis, our system can easily adopt false solutions. What can take us in another direction? As the teachers said in college, “Discuss.”