HOW TO TRY TO RULE THE WORLD.A Story by Peter Rogerson I've always liked writing essays about things I find important, and at the moment the rise of what can only be called fascism is important. After all, there's the grandkids... This should be quite an easy piece for me to write because several people, almost exclusively men (which probably means that men are from a psychologically more feeble sex and need power for its own sake), have tried it. The great promise, though, is that as nobody actually rules the world at the moment, nor has in my life time, this obviously means that all those who have tried in the past have ultimately failed. I dared say that when the world was a smaller place in that huge swathes of it were waiting to be discovered it was easier to think you rule it all. Take the Roman emperors, for example, Caesar this and Caesar that, they as good as ruled the world, though even they knew their world had boundaries beyond which other people flourished. That‘s why Hadrian built his wall: to keep the others out. They were barbarians. The Scots. But these days if you want to rule the world you’ve got to do one or two things, get a strong arm and be convincing, and a good model is Germany in the thirties. Now, I don’t want to offend any Germans because it quite simply wasn’t their fault that a crown prince was shot in Sarajevo, and that led by a series of stupidities to the Great War and millions of deaths. The fault wasn’t German but the human condition called stupidity, and that attitude still prevailed when Germany had to pay for it in reparations that were, to put it honestly, unreasonable. But one Adolf Hitler saw that things might be improved it he motivated his own people to want a better world. But in order to get that better world they really ought to own it all: then they could decide what was best and what was worst and put things right. To start with he needed a focus for hatred and nobody’s actually sure why he chose the Jewish people except that possibly because they were a diligent and hard working sector of German society and thus attracted financial success and wealth. But he chose them, and convinced enough people that it was perfectly all right for them to be generally hated. Every society has its thugs and I should imagine it’s always been so. We all see images of them, usually bloated and overweight and prone to alcohol abuse, who like to wrap themselves in flags. I dared say it’s a remnant of that long period of human evolution when primitive man learned to live in tribal groups and hate all other tribal groups because there was always a shortage of meat in the hunting grounds. The modern version is wrapping your mind in an image of a flag and hating everyone else for no discernible reason other than they exist. This comes out particularly when there are tribal conflicts like football matches and the smallest minority of the crowds, who are thuggish oafs who can pull really scary faces and don’t mind exposing themselves, draw attention to themselves. Back to Germany in the thirties. Hitler realised that the thugs would make a perfect force to enforce his prejudices and stamp his own version of a glorious future (his thousand year Reich springs to mind here) on a nation that was fundamentally a) fed up with relative poverty for which they were beginning to believe his rhetoric about Jewish greed was responsible, and b) decent. The trouble with decent people is they usually try to steer clear of the thugs. Confrontation is best avoided. You’ll probably know that. It doesn’t mean you’re a coward, but it does mean you’re mostly decent. Back in those relatively savage days of the early twentieth century the thugs must have thought they had it made. There was an enemy to torture or kill, there was a uniform to wear whilst stamping their feet and shouting hoarsely, and it was all perfectly legal. And, yes, there was a really special flag to wrap their minds in. And at the very helm there was a moustache that bellowed encouragement to hate. And the very natural development that came from this was the second world war. Millions died. All sorts of people got involved, like the Japanese who had two of their cities engulfed in nuclear hell, and in the end, the painful bloody end, there was a bunker in Berlin where the would-be ruler of the whole world shot himself. It hadn’t worked. He had failed. But then, his sort, after a few spurts of glory, always have failed. But the pattern is still there. And now, from the West, I fear I can hear the start of a new rise in an attempt for total power. And, if you want one further pointer as to what the future mustn’t hold (because if it does there’ll be more than two cities engulfed in nuclear fire) there’’s the ridiculous element. Fundamentally, Adolf Hitler with his silly moustache and excessive hectoring was a ridiculous figure who would have been mocked in many another age. And Donald Trump, he’s ridiculous too, and I’m afraid that he wants to rule the world. He’s got his thugs at hand. And with his insistence on being orange he’s got enough absurdity to be dangerous. Let’s see how the future pans out, shall we? I’ve got a personal interest here. I’ve got grandchildren, one of them not even born yet, bless her, and I don’t want any of them to have to be incinerated in an angry burst of tribal bullying. Not one of them. Not ever. © Peter Rogerson 29.06.18
© 2018 Peter RogersonReviews
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Peter RogersonMansfield, Nottinghamshire, United KingdomAboutI am 80 years old, but as a single dad with four children that I had sole responsibility for I found myself driving insanity away by writing. At first it was short stories (all lost now, unfortunately.. more..Writing
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