Gregory, on Belgravia Dispatch fisks the London protestors, and analyzes what makes them tick. And he also briefly touches on something that says more about where we are, and where we're going, than any of us have so far perceived:
This is really more all about the difficulties of being this epoch's Roman Empire. What do I mean? Simply that our unrivaled power is the cause of so much of this hyperventilation and hand-wringing.Put differently, a mixture of fascination, envy and fear bred of feverish hyperbole about the gunslinging cowboy George leading the biggest outlaw state of them all. And, the story goes, taking the world on a road to perma-war.
And he also accurately observes (with insufficient irony, however) that the most popular America-bashers, are Americans. The whole thing is a nuisance, but it's also fascinatingly curious. There's an element of, dare I say the word, charisma in this.
According to a wonderful Yoda-like professor of mine who expanded a bit on Max Weber's thesis on social legitimacy (Thelma Z. Lavine), charisma appears as a source of legitimation when a society or culture needs to break out of the "iron cage" of tradition and legal/rational authority. And the two great oppositional archetypes of political charisma that we have from western history are Napoleon Bonaparte and George Washington. No wonder there is such terror and fascination, because when you've suspended your traditional restraint and your rationality to the "magic" of charisma your ability to judge between good and evil can also lapse. These are, indeed, terrible times.
But, lest we forget, Washington and Bonaparte were very different sorts of leaders. Washington was not only willing to allow dissent, but also stepped out of the position of power at precisely the moment when his own personal charisma was greatest and could be transferred to the new institutions of the fledgling democracy that, itself, lacked legitimacy. This legacy was the key to nation-building, and a lesson that by their own admission also inspired Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa. This is a quality that Bonapartes always lack, as they strut their hour on the stage. So "good charisma," while it inspires, doesn't leave us without clues to its nature. Now we have a modern example of that very phenomenon that once resided only within exceptional men, and now exists in a larger form... fascinating, and terrible, that fits the times. And the question that hangs in our hearts..., what will be made of it?
Posted by Demosophist at November 18, 2003 02:09 AM | TrackBack