A couple years ago I wrote a piece on the WWI Armistice, titled Under a Spell.
The title came from a line in WWI journalist Philip Gibbs’ book Now It Can Be Told. Throughout, Gibbs quotes several people using that phrase — being under a spell — to describe how they went from normal life to the terror of the first modern war.
Because WWI was so different from previous wars, Gibbs’ book helped me think about the time of change we are in now. Not only the sudden change in the past weeks since the Capitol riot but also the buildup over the past few years and more. WWI itself was a break with the past and not just a larger version of earlier wars. Recent protests, riots, a pandemic, and more are different than earlier chaos.
We are under a spell now too.
But once cast, how do you break a spell?
A few scenes from Gibbs’ book stay with me. One takes place in a cafe in Cologne after the war’s end. English soldiers are having tea, served by a German waiter:
“I overheard a conversation between a young waiter and three of our cavalry officers. They had been in the same fight in the village of Noyelles, near Cambrai, a tiny place of ruin, where they had crouched under machine-gun fire. The waiter drew a diagram on the table-cloth. ‘I was just there.’ The three cavalry officers laughed. ‘Extraordinary! We were a few yards away.’ They chatted with the waiter as though he were an old acquaintance who had played against them in a famous football-match. They did not try to kill him with a table-knife. He did not put poison in the soup.”
Distant as that scene with its long-dead actors now seems, it is hopeful to know that it happened.
But where would that cafe be today? Physical cafes stopped being such places for us even before COVID shut them down. We give so much weight to user-generated content on social media and corporate-generated content on the news even though they often show our worst. Are those really our cafes? And what end is there to a war — if you can call it a war of beliefs or values or feelings — with opposing sides that happen to be in the same country, clumsily colored blue and red? And which are more isolated in the information they consume than where they live?
In the case of WWI, any good will on the part of the soldiers during the Armistice (a truce, but not technically “peace”) did not always transfer to the victors at home. As Gibbs also relayed:
“German music was banned in English drawing-rooms. Preachers and professors denied any quality of virtue or genius to German poets, philosophers, scientists, or scholars. A critical weighing of evidence was regarded as pro-Germanism and lack of patriotism. Truth was delivered bound to passion.”
This is the post-war scene I like least. However, the earlier hopeful exchange in the cafe was between soldiers who never wanted to be there. They both resented their politicians for sending them off. While they had killed each other, they hadn’t hated each other. But English soldiers returning home found different attitudes in their drawing-rooms, classrooms, and churches. Ironically, those with the least on the line felt the worst.
In our case, the US has become a country where family members repeat the wrong talking points and then start to hate each other. Where neighbors refuse to talk to each other because of front yard signs.
When WWI’s cannons cooled, Allied politicians heated up at Versailles in a much criticized peace treaty. The pandemic of that time, the 1918 flu, weakened some of those with milder views on how to pursue the peace, including the US president, who was too sick to continue to protest.
Old outcomes, whether intentional or not, can have long-term effects. People continued to fight for generations because of decisions made at Versailles. In the US, even today you may see that some still carry the flag from the losing side of a Civil War over 150 years ago.
A perfect conclusion to a war would leave no one ever wanting to carry an old flag and not because it was banned or because of what the neighbors would think. But I worry that many will still want to carry old flags.
To think about this mess we’re in, we can ask what was intentional, unintentional, and inevitable and what we could do now.
Intentional, Unintentional, Inevitable
Where does a mentally divided country go? When basic values shift enough so that most enemies are domestic, what then? Is there an Armistice?
Mobs in any of the protests or riots over the past year and more seem to be unintentional and inevitable. While large groups showing outrage might seem to emerge suddenly, they often have long windups. But large-scale top-down action seems to shock almost everyone with the potential for unintended consequences. Even many who hated Trump’s words leading up to the Capitol riot felt uncomfortable when companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Shopify, YouTube, and more deplatformed him.
On the intentional side, we have the desire to show outrage about whatever we are passionate about. It’s unintentional to lose control and go too far, but it always happens when a group grows. Enough people at the extremes start to dominate the group. Even “normal” people get swallowed up in the passion of the crowd. There are many examples of this over the past year. And it’s inevitable that this cycle happens eventually, given the supporting beliefs and feedback loops.
Tech and media business models that depend on engagement can also make downward spirals like the one we’re in inevitable.
When two sides separate and hold bad feelings against each other, there’s always a “what about.”
The construction is: “you may blame us for this thing, but what about that thing you did?” There is no end to it. People value different behavior differently. A rating of which is the better side only lasts so long until it flips. Keeping track takes brainpower better used elsewhere.
I was reminded of something else from history, a century before WWI. This account is from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. It’s a work of fiction, but one that captures cultural change and redemption like few others.
This is from the conversation between a dying member of the National Convention (the government after the French Revolution) and a bishop. The French Revolution is more apt than the WWI comparison because rather than a foreign enemy we’re in a time when many Americans reserve their most bitter hatred for other Americans.
Conventionary: “The work was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there.”
Bishop: “You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a demolition complicated with wrath.”
Conventionary: “Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of progress. In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the advent of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free all the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed, appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over the earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is the consecration of humanity.”
Bishop: “Yes? ’93!” [1793 was worst year of the reign of terror]
Conventionary: “Ah, there you go; ’93! I was expecting that word. A cloud had been forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen hundred years it burst. You are putting the thunderbolt on its trial.”
Onward
Only about 30 years come between the Reagan administration and the Trump administration. Yet the range of political tools grew dramatically in that time. A former good will between members of Congress dissolved. Also notably, the Reagan administration was the last one where Americans had a clear, multi-generation external enemy.
Politics became a sports season that never ends. We spend lots of effort talking and thinking about our feelings of injustice coming from the other side, whatever that side is. Not as much effort building things together.
Now, after a contested election, four years of ill will, another contested election, and on the eve of an inauguration where could we go? Should we let another cloud form and burst again?
Rather than waiting for the next storm, where could we focus on outcomes over intentions? What could we build? Of course unintended consequences can come from this work too, but I believe building something together is better than pulling ourselves apart.
Here is just a short list. I know you could add to it.
Education that enlightens students and doesn’t leave them with debt. Preventative healthcare that delivers better outcomes than better-compensated late-term procedures. Production of food that keeps people healthy. Affordable, vibrant neighborhoods rather than dull commuter towns. Protection of environmental resources. Creation of new businesses that serve a changing demographic. A better transportation system. Accurate, unbiased information in news and online….
Building the next society is difficult, but possibly more productive than arguing about the past one. Otherwise, what can we say about potential second-order effects of this time of ours?
Gibbs also wrote: “Or is war the law of human life? Is there something more powerful than kaisers and castes which drives masses of men against other masses in death-struggles which they do not understand?” He had no idea how his profession would change.
