I've been discussing with some friends the dialogue between Wretchard and Den Beste about the Battle of Waterloo and its implications for our time. One friend thinks that the problem concerns "national myths," exemplified in the flawed account of Waterloo that most people learned--an account that omits the critical role of the Prussians in the final defeat of the Little Corporal. We Americans, my friend says, are similarly seduced by our own national myths. And relatedy my British friend contends that the main lesson of the Napoleonic Era must be that a coalition is required to defeat the tyrant. I understand the appeal, and I'm sure he's right that we've been seduced by our grand myths, but what tyrant is he talking about? You mean to say there's a modern equivalent of Napoleon?
As far as mythic deception goes I'm far more concerned about those that are churned out by the assembly line of our flawed "public information system." As I've said before, I don't think the problem is bias... because, as Karl Mannheim obverved, everyone is biased. If that were really a civilization-killing flaw the planet would be ruled by intelligent arachnids or something. In fact the problem is mainly inappropriate method. After all, appropriate method is how David Hamilton-Williams corrected the grand Waterloo myth.
But people seem to figure that their bias offers a reliable "fix" or "adjustment" for the shortcomings of method, thereby compounding the problem. Biased nonsense is a little worse than balanced nonsense I guess, but not enough to matter. And a preposterously distorted image of reality emerges, an image that really doesn't help anyone but the enemy.
What would have happened had the Allied Expeditionary Force in Operation Overlord not had a system whereby newly acquired information was timelined and updated and corrected in order to build a constantly evolving and accurate comprehensive digraph of the events that were taking place within the "fog of war?" Our "press establishment," which was marginally appropriate for recounting the inner city blues or the occasional "trial of the century" can't even think in terms of more than one variable, as it considers the wisdom of policies that are, almost by definition, beyond its ken. If all else fails just call in the ideological bias to put things right. And later they "post-correct" by mulling over one or two cherished-but-no-longer relevant variables, prescribing rat poison for any public figure who, in a tiresomely familiar manner consistent with human institutions throughout history, manages to get a few things horribly wrong. The expectation that we have is one of simple-minded and agreeable omniscience. It's a standard that even Napoleon couldn't achieve.
And, getting back to the second point, was "coalition-building" the main lesson of the Napoleonic Era? It's true, after all, that Britain didn't defeat Napoleon alone. But just what is one supposed to do when those who perceive the danger, and are therefore willing to do something about it, are not "the usual suspects?" What irony, what very bitter irony, that those who were most successfully bootstrapped into the modern community of nations by the United States--"Old Yurp," S. Korea, the Philippines, etc.--are now the most complacent about the threat... and the least likely to have the moral courage to meet it. Not that they have much to offer... by design. One might be forgiven for thinking that the "success" of those nation-building efforts had a touch of myth.
Still, if the media could suffer a transformation like that the Pentagon experienced over the thirty years since Vietnam, most of the other issues would self-correct, eventually. And that brings us to the other bitter irony in all of this: that the US Military was compelled to painfully and operationally understand its failings in Vietnam, while the very folks who, according to their own mythology, revealed those flaws never had a similar naked lunch, of their very own.
Posted by Demosophist at July 15, 2004 12:02 AM | TrackBack