the dead sleep cold in spain tonight
It’s the anniversary of Franco’s rising against the Second Republic, triggering the Spanish Civil War. It makes me think of Hemingway’s “On the American Dead In Spain,” which is a beautiful piece of writing except for its fundamental ugly flaw of being flat wrong.
Hemingway was passionate about Spain and had close personal ties. But it’s remarkable that, following Franco’s complete victory and staring into the maw of Nazi expansionism, he could have felt that “you cannot hold any people in slavery.”
When he wrote it in 1939, he imagined still that fascism could be rolled back without the horror that was to come, and that the people of Spain would quickly turn on Franco. But Spain was a coming of age for the international left, and a crushing blow to liberal idealism. After Spain, it was no longer possible to believe that fighting for a good cause was all that was needed. The Spanish people who fought against the fascists, the internationals who took up arms or raised money and supplies in their own countries, all knew their cause was just. They must prevail because right was on their side. But right wasn’t enough.
The Spanish people never rose against Franco. In tumultuous times, he offered them security that couldn’t be found anywhere else in Europe, and later brought them firmly into the industrialized world. When dictatorship is the price of safety and prosperity, people will pay it almost every time.
America today, all rhetoric aside, does not face fascism in its future. A creeping dictatorship, on the other hand, is not hard to imagine at all. Times are tough now, but they could get a whole lot harder for us. We’re going to have some difficult choices to make.
Too many of those who would oppose a dictator are complacent in their attitudes. Knowing that their cause is just has lulled them into a belief that they must prevail. They may run about crying that this is it, democracy is really over this time, but deep down they don’t believe it. Their words speak of crisis, but their actions are business as usual.
Liberals are awakening after a generational slumber, but to what avail? They are still willing to break their principles, to make a deal, for the sake of political expediency. And radicals are still locked in the narcissistic individualism of the new left. Whatever labels they adopt, they don’t change the basic behaviors that deprive them of leadership, organization and discipline just when they need these the most. Self-criticism is encouraged when it pertains to diversity and carbon footprints, but little else.
It’s time to toughen up. We need to examine ourselves and ask if what we’re doing can work, if our theories provide us with a suitable practice or if we need to go back to the drawing board. Yet neither can introspection be a substitute for action. There will be occasions when imperfect action is preferable to passivity. There will also be times when emotionally satisfying action will be worse than doing nothing. There will be mistakes along the way, conflict, losses. That’s how it goes.
Hemingway may have felt that dictatorship could not stand for long, but before him came Walt Whitman and “To The States”:
To the States or any one of them,
Or any city of the States,
Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth,
ever afterward resumes its liberty.
In the end, Whitman was as wrong as Hemingway. Spain did in fact resume its liberty, and today is counted as one of the most progessive voices in Europe. But it took 36 years, a generation and then some.
Between Hemingway’s always and Whitman’s never we may find some truth, that no matter how dark the days we face, this too will pass. One day this will all be a matter for the history books, and then one day those books themselves will be dust.
But to those of us who live in the here and now, this is little consolation. All there is now is the struggle for our culture, our country and our planet. It’s not enough to be right- we also have to be strong. We have to be tough, and smart, and organized.
We can never rely on any romantic notions of “the people.” We can rely only on ourselves.
