The English King and his
Chancellor ride horseback into the small French town, a town having just
capitulated to their army that has been laying siege to it. Thereby it has saved itself from bloody
combat and perhaps annihilation. The
people line the streets cheering the King’s entrance, apparently glad of his
arrival and celebrating the takeover.
But looks are deceiving for this King; his Chancellor tells him as they
ride that the people are under constraint to make this show and that soldiers
disguised as town dwellers have been scattered through the crowd to incite them
to the display. To this disclosure the
King replies, “Why must you destroy all my illusions?” Moments later they are in conversation about
how conquered people should be treated by the conqueror. The Chancellor, who has arranged for the
capitulation, gives out with some astounding words of admonishment to the King,
remembering that only a few hours before the barons leading the army have been
itching to burn the town and lay it waste.
Says the Chancellor, “One must never drive one’s enemy to despair; it
makes [that enemy] strong. Gentleness is
better politics; it saps virility. A
good occupational force must never crush; it must corrupt.” Anyone familiar with the 1964 movie “Becket”
will remember the scene, those words eloquently delivered by Richard Burton in
the title role to Peter O’Toole as the lusty, slightly doltish King Henry II.
Corrupted by
gentleness!? Hmmmmm!!!!
There is a vast difference
between political “gentleness” and personal gentleness. Gentleness as a pragmatic device to achieve
and sustain power as opposed to gentleness as a means of cultivating
friendship! Gentleness as a sly weapon
to mislead and detract as opposed to gentleness as a humane “everybody wins”
virtue! Gentleness as a crafty means of
enslavement as opposed to gentleness as an opening of the heart! The former in each of these cases amounts to
a mixture of the lenient and the fearsome.
Keep your subjects just appeased enough that they are not fully
conscious of how afraid they are. Keep
them loving you and fearing you at the same time!
The phrase that is most
curious in Becket’s quote is “a good occupational force.” An oxymoron to be sure! What is good about the forced occupation of
another nation? In the context of the
movie’s plot it would be more accurate to call it an invasive force. Henry of course would say that he is
reclaiming French towns that he thinks he once owned.
The Allied nations occupied
much of Europe after World War II, simply by virtue of the fact that war had
been declared upon us and we were forced to defend ourselves by the conquering
of those territories. That defense had
to be an offense. We did not set out to
crush the nations, only the fascist governments that had taken possession of
them. I take satisfaction in knowing
that we invested ourselves in the rebuilding of those nations after the war,
not in their complete corruption. At the
same time, I cringe at the overkill we practiced in our waging of that
war. I am one of those unconvinced that
bombing civilian targets was justified or ever is. Whole cities in Germany were reduced to
rubble, thousands of civilian lives obliterated in a flash! In retrospect, all that appears to be warming
up maneuvers for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yes, we rebuilt, but as Colin Powell pointed out to George W. Bush on
the eve of the Iraq invasion, if you conquer territory, you will own it. And when the fate of another nation lies in
our hands, we have to face the thin line between occupation and
oppression. Maintaining Becket’s
“gentleness” in the raucous aftermath is no easy matter – quite a balancing
act.
I am pleased to see the
growing number of the world’s citizens who are unwilling to be corrupted. The Arab Spring has gotten bogged down, but
its very outbreak signals how desperately the peoples of the Middle East yearn
for democracy and to be in charge of their own destinies. When you are under someone’s heel and have no
way of escaping you have to do things you don’t like in order to survive. You have to obey your jailor. What other choice do you have? But it takes a lot of discernment and
determination and pure stamina to avoid being beguiled by seeming acts of
humanity aimed at “sapping virility.”
Whatever Becket had in mind, I define the word virility for use in the
21st century as “vigor or forcefulness,” the third shade of meaning
indicated in the World Book Dictionary.
One can suffer repression
for so long that the slightest concession or act of forbearance on the part of
the oppressor can seem like an act of magnanimity and healing. A sop that passes for a saving grace! In George Orwell’s “1984”, the character of
Winston Smith at first recoils at his repression by the authorities, wishing
for liberation. But by the end of the
book he has been corrupted by what seems to be the patient “gentle” nurturing
of a master instructor, an apparent revolutionary who is in actuality a
tormentor working for the state. This
tormentor messes up Winston’s mind so badly that he loses all sense of himself
and ends up embracing the very Big Brother he has secretly hated.
Long term inmates of
prisons have been known to have their sense of self ruined if not obliterated;
they lose all emotional familiarity with any life they once knew. In “The Shawshank Redemption,” the motion
picture based upon the Stephen King best seller, James Whitmore is a case in
point. When the story begins, he has
just completed his fiftieth year behind bars, and later when he hears that he
is soon to be paroled, he goes berserk and threatens to kill a fellow inmate
and is prevented only by the intervention of Tim Robbins, a framed innocent man
living on the same cell block. It is
Morgan Freeman, another lifer, who in reference to Whitmore observes that the
man “has become institutionalized.” He
has been in the confining walls so long that he has come “to depend upon them”
for a kind of protection and security.
That has also happened to citizens of nations under totalitarian
control. Mention of this brings me to
the subject of Vladimir Putin.
Much on all the minds of
the free world right now is the question of his intentions. Does he have his sights set on more than
simply Crimea? He is an ex-KGB operative
who seems bent on bringing back, if not the Cold War as such, then at least
some semblance of the police state that Russia has traditionally been noted
for. How soon will the Crimeans, most of
whom seem to be exulting in the so-called annexation at the moment, discover
that yet another “savior” is actually a despot working under the disguise of a
“gentle” leader? How much have they lost
sight of Russian history under Stalin and Kruschev and the brutalities those
men practiced? They are cheering their
conqueror (yes, conqueror) now; when will the cheering stop? How soon before the vigor and force of their
minds (their virility) are sapped? What
oppression or repression is in their future that will make them strong or drive
them to despair?
A “good occupational
force!” So Putin thinks of the move he
has made. The oxymoron, after a whole
millennium since Becket’s time, is still alive and kicking.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn
about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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