“Many public-school children seem to know only two dates–1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don’t know what happened on either occasion.”
-Mark Twain
Without a true sense of history, beyond a rote recitation of dates and events, the human saga in which we find ourselves loses its context and meaning. Real progress never happens if we forget the past.
“Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. What keeps a republic on its legs is good citizenship”
-Mark Twain, Layman’s Sermon (speech)
The foundation of a Republican Democracy is the active participation of its citizenry.
Without the informed, concerned, and active interest of the populace for the public execution of government and power, that power naturally consolidates, like a funnel, toward the narrow bottom.
The question then becomes, what is the state of our Republic today, and what are you going to do about it?
…a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.
– Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad
Does a man’s self-importance shrink along with the glaciers, even as his foolishness grows?
“It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”
-Mark Twain
The question then becomes whether it is better that he keep his mouth shut, or open it and talk. Perhaps it really doesn’t make any difference. Either way it’s maddening to anyone that attempts a maintenance of sanity and fidelity to the truth.
“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
-Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
To laugh at what wishes to threaten us is to take from it all power to do so. However, in some cases you may still need to run.
“I will set it down here as a maxim that the operations of the human intellect are much accelerated by an earthquake. Usually I do not think rapidly–but I did upon this occasion. I thought rapidly, vividly, and distinctly.
With the first shock of the five, I thought–‘I recognize that motion–this is an earthquake.’
With the second, I thought, ‘What a luxury this will be for the morning papers.’
With the third shock, I thought, ‘Well my boy, you had better be getting out of this.’
Each of these thoughts was only the hundredth part of a second in passing through my mind. There is no incentive to rapid reasoning like an earthquake. I then sidled out toward the middle of the street- and I may say that I sidled out with some degree of activity, too. There is nothing like an earthquake to hurry a man when he starts to go anywhere.”
-Mark Twain, “The Great Earthquake in San Francisco,” New York Weekly Review, November 25, 1865
At a mere 4.2 in the Richter Scale, the quake that jerked me awake at 4:42 this morning with a literal jolt wasn’t quite the shaker that Twain experienced in the Great Quake of 1865.
In my 36+ years of living on the faultline, I’ve not experienced any Great Quakes, though I have ridden out countless minor ones (like this morning), some slighter bigger quakes, and then the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake that was dubbed “The Pretty Big One” at 7.1 (or 6.9 – depending on who’s giving out the numbers).
Loma Prieta effected life in the Bay Area for months, years, and even decades, as the new eastern span of the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Bridge slowly rising out of the bay will attest. Slated for completion in 2011, some 22 years after Loma Prieta collapsed a section of the original eastern span, thousands of cars and trucks still cross the repaired old span every day.
But it doesn’t take a huge trembler to experience the “accelerated intellect” of which Mark Twain speaks.
With the first hit, one’s attention is fully focused on the shaking floor and creaking beams the one normally calls home.
Whatever activity one is engaged in the millisecond previous is abandoned as full attention is now on whether this will pass and die away or grow angry and start throwing the furniture around.
It is a breathless pause the calls upon the intellect to assess the situation with haste lest some immediate action be necessary to avoid premature burial.
And then, just as suddenly as it began, it is over and all is quiet. The mind and body slowly relax, and for a moment, one isn’t even sure if it even really happened.
If you’re lucky.
Living on the faultline means that one day, the luck will run out.
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Mark Twain’s full account of the earthquake from Roughing It
“The list of things which we absolutely know, is not a long one, and we have not the luck to add a fresh one to it often, but I recognized that I had added one to mine this day. I knew, now, that it isn’t safe to sit in judgment upon another person’s illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.”
–Mark Twain, A Thousand Years Among the Microbes
There is little that we can be sure we really know. And what it is we may be most sure of might appear as the wisp of an illusion to another.
We best deal with our own illusions than pass judgment on someone else’s.
“Man has not a single right which is the product of anything but might.
Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single permanent right.”
-Mark Twain, notebook
Twain become, at times, darker and more melancholy as he grew older. Highly critical of America’s role in the Spanish-American war at the turn of the 20th century, Twain saw American Might and its claims toward a righteous cause in the conflict as an imperialistic sham. He was disappointed in seeing the nation, as he and many others saw it, abandon its ideal of human rights and freedom while quashing those rights in the Philippines even as we professed to be fighting for their cause.
Does simply expressing the idea of inalienable rights make it in any way more real than before? Is Mark Twain’s dark assessment of human rights true, despite the nation’s creed, and the true source of any right we posses merely the product of sheer might?
And what of the might of ideas? There was little more than that as the rag-tag American army took on the power and might of the British empire in the American Revolution. It was truly a revolution of ideas.
The fact is, even as Thomas Jefferson sweated out the words of the Declaration of Independence that hot June in the summer 1776, his own slaves toiled in the heat of his Virginia plantation.
Can a right exist if only in the highest aspirations of humanity? A seed pushing against the domination of the current might that opposes it.
Though it was more than half a century later and over the course of a brutal war fought on horrific, blood-soaked battlefields, slavery was finally abolished. But leaving in its wake continued hatred and brutality, a struggle between the idea of human rights and our human nature to lash out in fear and suppress the very rights we profess to hold so dear. A struggle that continues to this day and in each one of us.
So what is the answer? From whence do our rights we claim as inherent derive?
There are no answers here, just an admonition: Mark Twain’s stark assessment shows that those who do enjoy any measure of freedom, human rights, and equality are thus called to vigilance in the preservation of those rights, and resistance to their usurpation, from any and all sources.
“…the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth’s political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor.”
– Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
It is not enough to merely complain about failed leadership, poor governance, misguided policies, and questionable voting procedures. If we fail to engage in democracy will will surely lose it. Failing to defend the principals of democracy is an act of treason to the very idea.
To paraphrase Stalin: It is not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.
Find out about the Holt Bill and then call your representatives in Congress:
Mark Crispin Miller: The Holt Bill is a Poison Pill
Nancy Tobi in the Online Journal: Congress about to “just say yes” to permanent secret vote counting
“Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone–if still alive.”
– Mark Twain, Following the Equator
Big brass bands, parades, hotdog eating contests… all things Americana crowd the day.
And, of course, fireworks light up the evening sky and thunder across the land from coast to coast. All attended by throngs of people compelled to be part of the celebration, even if they’re not quite sure what it is they are celebrating.
But the best time for some is in the quiet of a summer’s evening, as the echoes of the loud and boisterous festival die away, unscathed and intact. Sometimes even Americans need to sit and reflect.