Citoyenne la traductrice jacobine

Happy Ides of March, all! (Before they slip away.) Today's post will again be devoted to miscellany, I'm afraid.

So, first item: A Word on Dictators

I really hate living in a society where it's okay to defend (some) known dictators, because the fact that said historical figure was a dictator is so well known that it can be placed in the background, allowing whoever wants to defend him or her (because I'm including autocratic queens in this as well) to say, "of course s/he was a dictator, BUT..." (And yet a society that allows the condemnation of historical figures who were not dictators simply by asserting that they were. I don't really think I need to point out who I'm talking about here.)

Case in point: today, since it is the Ides of March, we were discussing the day's significance in my Latin class. One of my friends in this class, who enjoys bringing in various baked goods for no particular reason (not that I'm complaining, mind!) brought cookies today. There was some joking discussion about how she shouldn't be celebrating because she had played Julius Caesar in a reenactment last semester. I, still half in jest, mentioned afterwards to her that I, for one, didn't mind celebrating, because I'm on the side of the conspirators. (Actually, my views are more complicated than that, as you know. I am unreservedly on the side of the fictionalized versions of the conspirators that the 18th century seems to have believed in. I'm much less enthusiastic about the real, historical conspirators, though if I had to choose, I'd still pick them over Caesar any day, so I wasn't exactly lying.) Now, because this conversation happened in half-joking mode, I'm not entirely sure what conclusions I can draw about what happened next, but nevertheless, it disturbs me.

This friend of mine proceeded to defend Caesar, as well as Octavianus (I still refuse to call him Augustus), on account of their achievements, but more, I think, because she considers them "awesome" or "badass" or some such tripe, completely discounting my objections that perhaps there might be a problem with the concept of absolute power in the hands of a single individual, not to mention with invading your own country and taking over its government with your own personal army, or issues of (il)legitimacy of power.

In fact, she then followed up by asserting that she was a firm believer in benevolent dictatorships, and thought that the best form of government is one where a single individual who somehow, magically, knows what's best for everyone, has all the power and then somehow, instead of the things dictators usually do, actually puts that magical knowledge of what's best for everyone into effect. And why? Because it's more efficient and there would be no "special interest groups" that way (well, except for the special interest group of one that is the dictator, but I guess that magically doesn't matter either)!

Now, of course, when I asked her whether she would like to live in a dictatorship, she replied no... unless she could be the dictator. This was at least half in jest, as I mentioned, but still, it seems to be a disturbingly common sentiment in a certain privileged milieu. (It's in no way an exaggeration, to state the obvious, that the vast majority of the students at my college are privileged.) Note that this is related to the "If you could change one thing about your country/if you could be President of the World for one day what would you change?" memes, but is in fact a rather unpleasant mutation, in that the former suggests that there are limits on your hypothetical powers, while the latter suggests there are no such limits.

I think I see at least one major cause of this - let me know if you disagree or want to mention some other factor - which is to say, the kind of illogical comparisons people tend to draw. We start with the issue of many people's ill-founded belief that if states which call themselves democracies are not democratic, they are at least as close as it's possible to get to democratic. Then we compare one of these states, the US, for example, and they way it really works, with a hypothetical construct: the ideal benevolent dictatorship (described above). The obvious choice to many people (although not to me - I'd rather live in the modern US, terrible as it is, than under some whitewashed version of Julius Caesar) is the latter. However, see how easily this model falls apart when we compare an ideal, hypothetical democracy with an ideal, hypothetical dictatorship. Since both are equally idealized, neither has the problems of pratical governance. However, the ideal democracy has something the ideal dictatorship lacks: legitimacy. I think this concept is not emphasized nearly enough in schools or in society at large. Just one more reason natural rights philosophy urgently needs to be taught in school (in the full significance of the word taught).

On a lighter note, I used to enjoy playing various simulator games, such as the Sims, Caesar (III) (speaking of), Civilization (IV) (which game I really hate for its reductionist views about what constitutes "civilization," as well as the impossibility of playing history straight even if you want to, but which I find strangely addictive in any case). In fact, I still enjoy playing them, but I leave them home when I'm at school because they eat your time. (The internet eats your time too, of course, but it is no longer an option not to use the internet, even if I wanted to.) I'll probably have to get rid of them altogether when I only live in one place. But I digress. When browsing TV Tropes through one of maelicia 's links, I came across the game "Europa Universalis," which is essentially a more particularized version of Civilization, from what I can tell. I won't buy it, for the above mentioned reasons, but I was curious about it so I went to the forum on the game's website.

There, I found this gem (obviously, these questions and answers are in the context of the game, but it's funnier if you forget that for a moment):

Q: What are the ins and outs of revolution? What does it do? Why would I want it?
A: New governments: Revolutionary Republic and Revolutionary Empire.

Leaving aside the question of whether a "Revolutionary Empire" is merely a figment of Bonapartiste propaganda...

Free war with damn near everyone.

Ain't it the truth.