By Mathias B. Freese
As an undergrad and American history major at Queens College, 1958 to 1962, I recall reading in a text by Henry Steele Commager, his observation that Churchill represented an “antique courage” during the early years of WW II. He remarked that Churchill essentially accomplished what Edward R. Murrow described as “to mobilize the English language and send it off into battle.” I remember well this rhapsody after watching Gary Oldman’s magnificent portrayal of Churchill in the 2017 “The Darkest Hour.”
If you know little of this wondrous actor, seek out “The Professional” or “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” to appreciate his range. He does things other actors dream of but cannot express. And to hear Oldman speak some of Churchill’s cadenced lines such as “We shall never surrender” is to be transported by great oratory.
And then I associate to the dearth of magical words magisterially delivered with passion and I realize it is absent in our political discourse. Churchill would have summed up Trump’s malevolence in a second, skewered him with repetitive verbal thrusts and stripped him of any remaining humanity he may have and ridicule him as Churchill did when he pronounced “nazi” as if a conclave of pebbles were in his mouth that need be spat out.
Like Wonder Woman’s bracelets, asides, attacks and aspersions bounce off Trump. No one as yet has discovered his kryptonite, to mix comic hero metaphors. As I see it, no one goes after Trump’s core values. He is an outer directed human being. He is not driven by an inner directed self.
It is here Churchill would have him. Neither Hamas or Nazi can grasp any appeal to normal human behavior. It is a useless appeal. However, to articulate that appalling emptiness, to assault its harsh craven anomie, instills in the powerful rest of humanity what differentiates good from evil, that clearly attacks evil and malignant acts of depravity. Of the men that slaughtered six hostages it is not far away from what Trump and his minions are capable of. You may think this is hyperbole or exaggeration. Think not. Eichmann and the commandant of Auschwitz, Hoess, are proof of what ordinary drab man is capable of. Your next door neighbor could be your Hitler. Read Hannah Arendt.
In my two books about the Holocaust I relied upon my readings of fascism, even down to the autobiography of the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess. Trump, who has difficulty registering another human being, without a cognizant sense of self, with little knowledge of the stem cell of fascism he comes from represents a kind of American fascism that can be seen in Benjamin Franklin’s racist quotation, “Rum + Savage = 0.” Trump, like a great white whale traveling the waterways of this great continent, this piscatorial terror, bruising our souls with his id uncorked no one has yet arisen to harpoon this monster.
No one has called out Trump at his existential pith. Churchill’s example is what I speak of, to address his threat to democracy at its DNA level. Since he is a historical, he is more frightening – at least Hitler gave us Mein Kampf. Trump has given his spawn. We need a voice saturated in history and its teachings, a human being who intuits his fellow human beings because he is aware and has a daily conversation with himself. A greatly gifted parent should introduce his child to the potent and evolutionary concept of an interior monologue, for in that is the awakening of intelligence. We need a David.
Until an oratorical stake is put through his heart, Trump perseverates. Churchill would have cut off his head as well to make sure the vampire had died.
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