The Dark Side of the Force ...

Whispers, thank you for embedding that video of William Shatner reciting in poetic fashion Sarah Palin's somewhat florid (as opposed to Floridian) torrent of resignation prose. I doubt that her speech will make anyone's list of the top moments in American oratory.


It is interesting that you chose to embed a video of William Shatner since in his earlier incarnation as Captain Kirk he roamed the galaxy battling the forces of tyranny on behalf of the Federation, a benevolent government stressing liberal democratic theories of authority - governing with the consent of the governed. This causes me to wonder, however, whether it is our human expectation that the dark force of control will always be in mortal combat with the light of liberalism - and that technology merely serves to give each side additional weapons with which to engage in the battle.


Why would someone want a regimented society? What is attractive about order?

The answer, in my mind, is sourced in fear in all its many manifestations, fear of the unknown, of loss, of pain, of poverty. Order, at a minimum, creates an expectation of certainty and certainty eliminates the terror of what might happen next. One knows who gives the commands and one knows that they will be followed. Mussolini, for example, was able to tame the Italian train system so that the trains ran on time. No one needed to worry about being late or never arriving at one's destination. The North Koreans have created a system seemingly built on the premise that the "Great Leader" must break out into cold sweats about nearly everything around him and as a consequence he surrounds himself with a powerful military and spy system to provide himself with whatever comfort he can find. The Iranian religious authorities have trepidation about many things, not least of which is the influence that conflicting ideas might have on their power base. Most tyrants are the same, needing to project excess strength as a means of quelling their anxieties. Think only of Saddam Hussein, trapped between a need to project to Iran that he had nuclear weapons and to the rest of the world that he did not. That dilemma did not end well.


Such behavior is not limited to governmental authority. In corporate America, for example, it often seems that the fearless leader is not so fearless after all. The screaming CEO angrily demanding a response from a subordinate has usually experienced a paralyzing fright a nano-second before the raging request is made. The CEO probably does not understand that dread triggers his anger. Perhaps, at most, he understands that the rage serves to center attention on himself so that he can more easily re-assert his authority. It must feel good to have everyone marching to a tune you whistle yourself.

George Bush was re-elected President largely because he and his team ably harnessed the dark power of our collective national angst. Barack Obama set out to fight fear with hope, brightly attracting the masses to emerge from their fox-holes. Even Mike Huckabee strode onto that bandwagon with his "Give Hope a second chance" slogan, a pun on the fact that both he and Bill Clinton were born in Hope, Arkansas. Sarah Palin, oddly, seems to evoke fear in those who respond to hope (me, for example). I'm not sure that I entirely understand my own emotional response to her, but part of it is my own disquietude of what she might do, if empowered, to ideals that I cherish.

A commenter asks whether or not international organizations serve to support authoritarian power structures. I would have answered her question in this post, but I got on to something else. Perhaps, Whispers, you'd care to respond to that question?