Madness Rising

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I do enjoy some of the British mysteries offered by PBS and a few other networks. Some are quite good, like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series starring the late Joan Hickson, as well as Foyle’s War, and the Inspector Morse mysteries. I’ve also enjoyed the Midsummer Murders series with Chief Inspector Barnaby. Most all of these shows were originally aired 15 or 20 (or more) years ago, and even though I watched them way back when, I still enjoy the re-runs. That’s the nice thing about aging. My memory cells are often hard to access directly. Although I’m centain I've seen a particular episode before, it was so long ago, I’m unable to recall the details. As for whodunit, I haven’t a clue.

Anyway, a recent (re-run) episode of Midsummer Murders centered on the residents of a small village who had begun to resemble the pitchfork-wielding peasants in a Frankenstein movie. At one point, the chief inspector's sidekick, the young Detective Sergeant Jones, expressed surprise at the odd and potentially violent behavior of the townspeople. Barnaby's response was priceless: "It's all about a sense of community, Jones. One goes mad and they all go mad. It's a wonderful world we have out there."

When I heard those words, I thought about Portland and Minneapolis and Seattle and New York and a few dozen other cities in which madness has spread from a dedicated cadre of Marxists and anarchists (and if you are either, you are certainly mad) to other easily manipulated members of the population. The latter consist largely of people with a strong need for community, a need they have been unable to satisfy through normal societal avenues. They are unfulfilled, confused, angry, ignorant, and firmly convinced that society itself is the cause of all their problems. Revolutionaries have always sought out such people because their need to belong to something greater than themselves, something to give their lives purpose, makes them the perfect followers who can be convinced to do almost anything. Indeed, one goes mad and they all go mad.

If you study the Russian Revolution of 1917, you’ll discover it began in much the same way. Examining the dozen or so years preceding the revolution is particularly troubling because they offer us a foreshadowing of what we can expect in the days to come unless we respond actively and quickly to the madness affecting so many of our citizens. Widespread terrorism and frequent assassinations plagued Russia during those years and what did the Russian liberals do? They supported the terrorists. Yes, indeed, they bankrolled Bolsheviks and anarchists and provided them with political cover. But what did the Bolsheviks (the terrorists) do as soon as they seized control? They first killed all the liberals. Read Solzhenitsyn, a man whose work has been largely ignored in recent years, but should rather be required reading for college freshmen, and maybe even for us old retired people.

Destroying Historical Memory

Rather than bore you with my own take on the Russian Revolution, I suggest you read this article by Northwestern University professor, Gary Saul Morson, published in the latest issue of First Things, one of my favorite journals: Suicide of the Liberals. Professor Morson paints a sad portrait of the liberals of pre-revolutionary Russia and by doing so forces us to confront the truth about our own slightly mad society.

Are we facing an updated version of this societal madness today? I’m no prophet, so I don’t know. But the ancient Greeks, who occasionally showed signs of wisdom, had a saying;: Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad.