The phrase “shortcuts to greatness are roads to hell” comes from George Packer writing in the November issue of The Atlantic. It’s true though, in that shortcuts that involve submission to an autocratic leader really do lead to hell.
The Donner Party
I learned that recently in researching the fate of the notorious Donner Party. It turns out, unlike what you might think, that what doomed those folks to cannibalism was an ill-fated attempt at a shortcut, pushed on them by an imperious little autocrat traveler. They submitted to Mr. Imperious’ will and boy oh boy did they end up truly on a road to hell. Not just across snowbound mountain passes but the Great Salt Lake Desert of Utah. Which was hell. And which they wouldn’t have ended up staggering across if they hadn’t been bullied into a ‘shortcut’ by an egotistic enthusiast.
The members of the party grew weaker and more disputatious as they fried and froze in Utah, weary and discouraged and lost. And things just got worse from there. It was as though God punished them for their credulity and their haste.
Let that be a lesson to you. Really.
Submitting to someone else’s unilateral power to get the ‘benefits’ of the shortcut? You’re on an express train to a hell you don’t know the dimensions of.
Today’s Shortcut to Hell
In the case of the US, we boarded that express train some time ago, when Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States for his second term. These last 10 months have apparently been so hellish that in a recent CNN poll 63% of adults disapproved of Trump. Impressive given that Republicans hesitate mightily (cough, sunk costs) to disapprove of Trump. Republicans are peeling away though given the reality that greatness does not seem to be visible at this point.
An interesting element of the current trek through a barren, hellish landscape of submission to Trump’s will is that the people doing the submitting are the elites. The leaders. The folks with money. The oligarchs. The ones with no skin in the game but a whole lot of bogus buckaroonies in the bank stolen from the labor of the people who aren’t elite. The elites are shitting their pants and saying yes sir here’s my lunch money. Let me keep everything I stole from the lower classes and I’ll do anything you say.
Meanwhile, the people who should be well and truly convinced they have no power whatsoever, the workers of America, aren’t having it. In spite of Citizens United and half a century of mostly successful attempts to undermine them, regular people seem to be in a ‘fuck you’ mood. Not all are saying ‘fuck you’ to Trump directly. But 63% of them are giving his ‘shortcuts’ the middle finger. While their insides quietly boil and mutter about ‘yeah right more lies you lying asshole’. And so on.
People vote for Democrats and Socialists and Democratic Socialists and take to the streets with sandwiches and frog costumes. And because they have nothing left to lose (given how it’s all been stolen by corporations and neoliberal/libertarian fuckers), they aren’t even slightly in a mood to submit.
Which is a very wonderful thing about America. And a lesson to people who feel the need to go all Grinchy on everyone and steal every last thing they can get their hands on.
No Shortcut to the Revolution
There’s no shortcut to the mythical ‘revolution’ though either. What’s needed instead is exactly what’s missing these days. Human connection. The thing that tech and social media have taken from us.
People cohering around intellectual affinities, economic interests, physical locations, social pursuits, religious beliefs, political opinions, causes and other things they have in common. People getting to know each other, forming alliances, working together, creating bonds, providing aid, supporting each other. Creating food banks, helping their neighbors. People doing good stuff together, even if it’s only bowling or a knitting or book club.
I’m not saying bowling, and softball, and line dancing are sufficient. I’m saying they are necessary. The infrastructure of connection is necessary. It’s necessary to make doing good great again. And there are no shortcuts for that.
Doing good has taken a real beating in our neoliberal tech-heavy social media era. Around 125 years ago, half of all adult men belonged to some sort of union, or club, or association. People weren’t talking about male loneliness back then! Not everything these groups did was good, but by and large they tried to do at least some good things. Doing good was not despised by an entire political party. And people associated with each other as equals, as free people. Not as consumers or wage slaves or units of productivity.
As free people. As participants in public life. Participants. Public life. Concepts that have almost died. A third of the men who signed the US Constitution were Freemasons, members of a social organization. Membership that likely helped cement their break from autocracy, monarchy, and authoritarianism toward concepts like equality, fraternity, and liberty.
You see, one of the odd things about belonging to groups, fraternities, associations, unions etc., is that the members have to engage in self-government. Regular people get experience, close-up experience, with governing. People involved have to do things. Not necessarily things they want to do, but things that contribute to keeping the group going.
None of this is perfect or a cure-all for our social ills, but participation in groups introduces members to the realities of governing, the advantages and disadvantages of various ways of conducting business that is not oriented around profit or the stock market. Sometimes members get an inside look at the pitfalls and nefariousness that can ensue when people compete for influence in an organization. It can be very eye-opening and something of an antidote to the naivete with which many of the American public seem to approach the pronouncements of the powerful.
These days, people are spontaneously forming groups to aid immigrants being targeted by the federal government.
There aren’t, so far as I know, millions of people participating in these groups yet. But there could be. And this type of effort is a form of both the heroism and the virtue that people can display when they get together and support each other. And in spite of what some commentators today would have you believe – virtue is a good thing.
These kinds of groups are no shortcut to salvation. But they are critical to the survival of the values of Western Civilization. The reason they are critical is the same reason that immigrants are being targeted by the Federal government. Structures are collapsing; things are chaotic and uncertain. Half the population is getting rapidly poorer and a smaller numbers are getting rapidly richer.
These are the kinds of conditions that have prompted waves of virulent anti-immigrant sentiment in the US before. They are also the conditions that have prompted organizations to aid immigrants. Human nature contains both elements, the hateful and the loving. The vile and the virtuous.
The hateful and the vile organize and form associations and clubs to salve their crushing isolation and loneliness. The loving and the virtuous must do so as well. There’s no good excuse for sitting on the sidelines.
Me personally, I find it very daunting to consider joining something like The Knights of Columbus or a group to fight discrimination or what have you. But we all have to do what we can, even if it involves some work or some personal growth.
Sometimes getting pretty fed up involves patience. And doing the little things to build connections with people who would like us to be on the road to heaven, not hell.
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