More Twain on oppression and revolution
Hey Folks,
I’ve been re-reading Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court and sharing pieces of Twain’s political commentary with you here (this is the 8th entry) .
His insights remain pertinent to this day. We haven’t changed much from Twain’s day – or from King Arthur’s, for that matter.
Chapter 20 – The Yankee observes the oppressed and comments upon their needs.
It was a curious situation; yet it is not on that account that I have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which seemed to me still more curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter brought from these down-trodden people no outburst of rage against their oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. Yes, here was a curious revelation indeed, of the deapth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entire being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in this life. Their very imagination was dead. When you can say that of a man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no lower deep for him.
I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sort of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning a peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringing up the ungetaroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in this world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must BEGIN in blood, whatever may answer afterward. If history teaches anything, it teaches that. What this folk needed, then, was a Reign of Terror and a guillotine, and I was the wrong man for them.
I’ve been re-reading Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court and sharing pieces of Twain’s political commentary with you here (this is the 8th entry) .
His insights remain pertinent to this day. We haven’t changed much from Twain’s day – or from King Arthur’s, for that matter.
Chapter 20 – The Yankee observes the oppressed and comments upon their needs.
It was a curious situation; yet it is not on that account that I have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which seemed to me still more curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter brought from these down-trodden people no outburst of rage against their oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. Yes, here was a curious revelation indeed, of the deapth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entire being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in this life. Their very imagination was dead. When you can say that of a man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no lower deep for him.
I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sort of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning a peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringing up the ungetaroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in this world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must BEGIN in blood, whatever may answer afterward. If history teaches anything, it teaches that. What this folk needed, then, was a Reign of Terror and a guillotine, and I was the wrong man for them.
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