“What gave Spencer Perceval’s killing this resonance was His Faith. Writing to George Butler, the headmaster of Harrow, the Prime Minister once said that his ambition for His Eldest Son was that he should be
‘A Champion of True Religion in A Careless World’
By this, he meant something quite SPECIFIC.
The True Religion was that of the Evangelical Anglicans who in the 1780s had begun to shake an almost moribund Church of England into new life.
Although divided in their methods – the brothers John and Charles Wesley preached to thousands in the open air, whereas the father and son pairing of Henry and John Venn restricted their message to middle-class church congregations – the founding Evangelicals were united in holding that
True Belief came from an IMMEDIATE, PERSONAL Experience of God,
To be Found in The Bible
and
EXPRESSED through ACTION.
It was a PHYSICAL rather than an intellectual Faith – ‘Experience,’ declared Henry Venn, ‘is a Living Proof, stronger than a thousand arguments’ – and, unlike The Careless World that agreed with Lord Melbourne’s clever dictum that
‘Things are coming to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade private life’,
Evangelicals believed that
The WHOLE POINT of Religion
was to
TRANSFORM both Private and Public Life
[ by dressing as a Giant Bat. ]
The word they used to describe
God Working in The World was‘PROVIDENCE’
and
Any ACTION that made
The World a Better Place
was therefore termed PROVIDENTIAL.
The Spread of Civilisation itself and the general Improvement of Mankind through Laws and Moral Education could therefore be taken as
Evidence of a Divinely Ordered Creation.
‘God has so assigned to Things their General Tendencies,’ declared William Wilberforce, a standard-bearer for The Faith, ‘and established Such An Order of Causes and Effects, as . . . loudly proclaim The Principles of His Moral Government, and strongly suggest that Vice and Imprudence will finally terminate in Misery’.
Thus to Be Good was NOT ENOUGH.
In order to Help The Work of Providence,
it was necessary to DO Good.
‘Action is The Life of Virtue,’
wrote Hannah More, the Evangelical poet and friend of Wilberforce, and
The World is The Theatre of Action.’
It was not just The Church of England that needed to be actively reformed, but
Society ITSELF had to be cleaned-up.
Consequently, some Evangelicals, and especially the followers of the Wesleys who broke with The Church of England to form the Methodist Union, became radicals
"I’m sure you’ve heard old fossils like me talk about
Pearl Harbor, Yindel. Fact is, we mostly lie about it. We make it sound like we all leaped to our feet
and went after the Axis on The Spot. Hell, we were scared. Rumors were flying,
we thought the Japanese had taken California. We didn’t even have an army, so there we were, lying in bed pulling the sheets over our heads – and there was Roosevelt, on the radio,
Strong and Sure,
taking Fear and turning it into
a Fighting Spirit. Almost overnight, we had Our Army. We won The War. Since then, Presidents have come and gone,
each one seeming smaller, weaker… The Best of Them like faint echoes of Roosevelt - A few years back, I was reading a news magazine – a lot of people with a lot of evidence
said that Roosevelt knew Pearl was going to be attacked –
and that he let it happen.
Wasn’t proven.
Things like that never are. I couldn’t stop thinking how horrible that would be…
and how Pearl was what got us
off our duffs in time to stop The Axis. A lot of Innocent Men died. But we won The War. It bounced back and forth in my head
until I realised, I couldn’t Judge it. It was Too Big. He was Too Big…” The Nazis are The Enemy. Wade into Them. Spill their blood.
Shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was Your Best Friend's Face -- You'll Know What to Do.
I worry that My Son might not understand what I've tried to be.
And if I were to be killed, Willard, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything – everything I did, everything you saw – because there's nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies.
And if you understand me, Willard, you will do this for me.
Dear Son.
I'm afraid that both you and your mother will have worried at not hearing from me during the past weeks, but my situation here has become a difficult one.
I have been officially accused of Murder by the army.
The alleged victims were four Vietnamese double agents.
We spent months uncovering then and accumulating evidence.
When absolute proof was completed, we acted. We acted like soldiers.
The charges are unjustified.
They are, in fact, and under the circumstances of this conflict, quite completely insane.
In a war, there are many moments for compassion and tender action.
There are many moments for ruthless action.
What is often called ruthless, but may, in many circumstances, be only clarity.
Seeing clearly what there is to be done, and doing it directly, quickly, awake.
I will trust you tell your mother what you choose about this letter.
As for the charges against me, I am unconcerned.
I am beyond their timid, lying morality, and so I am beyond caring.
You have all my faith.
Your Loving Father.
Col. Walter E. Kurtz
“This negro, in the eyes of many, has been persecuted. Perhaps as an individual he was. But it was his misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks.”
— Asst U.S. Attourn. Gen. Harry Parkin
“No brutality, no infamy, no degradation in all the years of Southern slavery, possessed such a villainous character and such atrocious qualities as the provision of the laws of Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and other states which allow the marriage of the negro, Jack Johnson, to a woman of Caucasian strain.
Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant to the very principles of a pure Saxon government. It is subversive to social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy, and ultimately this slavery of white women to black beasts will bring this nation to a conflict as fatal and as bloody as ever reddened the soil of Virginia or crimsoned the mountain paths of Pennsylvania…
Let us uproot and exterminate now this debasing, ultrademoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy.”
— Congressman Seaborn Roddenberry
“It comes down, then, after all to this Unforgivable Blackness.”
— W.E.B. Du Bois
I watched a, snail crawl along The Edge -- of a straight razor.
That's My Dream.
That's My Nightmare: Crawling, Slithering, along The Edge, of a straight razor --
and Surviving.
Have you ever considered any real Freedoms?
Freedoms from the opinion of Others... even the opinions of yourself?
As long as cold beer, hot food, rock 'n' roll, and all the other amenities remain expected norm, our conduct of The War will only gain impotence.
I've seen Horrors, Horrors that you've seen.
But you have no Right to call me a Murderer.
You have a Right to Kill Me.
You have a Right, to Do That - but You have No Right to Judge Me.
It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what Horror means.
Horror!Horror has a Face, and you must make A Friend of Horror.
Horror and Moral Terror are your friends.
If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared.
They are Truly Enemies.
I remember when I was with Special Forces.
Seems a thousand centuries ago.
We went into a camp to inoculate the children.
We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying.
He couldn't see.
We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm.
There they were in a pile: a pile of little arms.
And I remember I...I...I cried.
I wept like some grandmother.
I wanted to tear my teeth out.
I didn't know what I wanted to do.
And I want to remember it.
I never want to forget it.
I never want to forget.
And then I realised, like I was shot — like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead.
And I thought:
My God, the genius of that. The genius!
The will to do that: perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure.
And then I realised, They were stronger than We, because They could stand it.
These were not monsters.
These were men, trained cadres — these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who have children, who are filled with love — but they had the strength — the strength! — to do that.
If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly.
You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilise their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, judgement.
Without Judgement!
Because it's Judgement that defeats us.
We train Young Men to drop Fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!
I worry that My Son might not understand what I've tried to be.
And if I were to be killed, Willard, I would want someone to go to My Home and tell My Son everything – everything I did, everything you saw – because there's nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies.
And if you understand me, Willard, you will do this for me.
Fawn Brodie, in her biography of the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith, suggests that one important tool for understanding the psychology and the demagogic appeal of the founder of the Latter-day Saints can be found in the psychological disorder of pseudologia fantastica, whose victims or practitioners are often referred to as impostors.
Brodie preferred the notion of impostor to literary historian Bernard DeVoto’s classification of Joseph Smith as a “paranoid,” or Kimball Young’s labeling of the Prophet as a “parapath,” that is to say as someone unable to separate fantasy and reality.
MULTIPLE PERSONALITY ORDER
In the experience of the present author, the notions of the imposter and of pseudologia fantastica might well be expanded to include greater emphasis on the question of multiple personalities and multiple personality disorder. This insight derives from my own observation over a number of years of a charismatic political leader with strong tendencies toward the creation of a personality cult, somewhat on the model of Joseph Smith.
The individual in question is Lyndon H. LaRouche.
In the 1960s and 1970s, LaRouche was remarkable for his intelligence overview and programmatic orientation, which tended more and more to be overshadowed by a crude demand for adulation and unquestioning obedience, precisely along the lines of a personality cult. Over time, one got the impression that LaRouche had several distinct personalities –one perceptive and insightful, one raging, narcissistic, and vindictive, and yet another whimsical and nostalgic.
Needless to say, it was the insistent and vindictive personality which employed the other selves to recruit a following and then impose on them the yoke of his personality cult. In this process, he exhibited moments of charismatic rhetorical appeal, and other moments of the most primitive infantilism.
He also neglected the most elementary precautions. On the one hand, he launched campaigns of exposure and denunciation against Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Rockefeller, and other public figures of some power, while at the same time he refused to submit yearly federal income tax returns. It was this latter failing which helped to put him in jail for five years.
On at least one known occasion, LaRouche reportedly boasted of his multiple personalities, while claiming that he had the ability to shift at will from one personality to another, according to his own psychological needs. LaRouche called this his “multiple personality order.” The parallels of this syndrome to the case of Joseph Smith are evident.
In her discussion of the impostor, Phyllis Greenacre also cites the case of Titus Oates (1649-1705), who was the great protagonist of the fictitious “Popish Plot” during the reign of Charles II Stuart of England.
This plot was supposedly aiming at a Catholic takeover of England with the help of the Stuarts. Fictitious though this report turned out to be, its political effects were most welcome to the pro-Venetian Whig party of the English aristocracy.
Without intelligence networks interested in promoting Titus Oates’ story, he might have been relegated to total obscurity.
Oates was a mythomaniac, recounting wild inventions he knew his listeners wanted to hear, all in a desperate bid to attract attention. But there were powerful political forces who found his hallucinations advantageous.
This reminds us once again, as in the case of Joseph Smith, to always look for the interaction between the individual impostor and the organized networks which constitute and assemble the audience which the impostor so urgently desires.
Some key excerpts from Greenacre:
“An impostor is not onlya liar, but a very special type of liar who imposes on others fabrications of his attainments, position, or worldly possessions. This he may do through misrepresentations of his official (statistical) identity, by presenting himself with a fictitious name, history, and other items of personal identity, either borrowed from some other actual person or fabricated according to some imaginative conception of himself.
There are similar falsifications on that part of his identity belonging to his accomplishments, a plagiarizing on a grand scale, or making claims which are grossly implausible. Imposture appears to contain the hope of getting something material, or some other worldly advantage.
DATA: Captain, why should a King wish to pass as a commoner? If he is The Leader, should he not be leading? PICARD: Listen to what Shakespeare is telling you about The MAN, Data.
A King who had True feelings for his soldiers would wish to share their fears with them on the eve of battle.
While the reverse certainly exists among the distinguished, wealthy, and competent persons who lose themselves in cloaks of obscurity and assumed mediocrity, these come less frequently into sharp focus in the public eye. One suspects, however, that some “hysterical” amnesia is, and dual or multiple personalities are conditions related to imposturous characters. The contrast between the original and the assumed identities may sometimes be not so great in the matter of worldly position, and consequently does not lend itself so readily to the superficial explanation that it has been achieved for direct and material gain. The investigation of even a few instances of imposture –if one has not become emotionally involved in the deception –is sufficient to show how crude though clever many impostors are, how very faulty any scheming is, and how often, in fact, the element of shrewdness is lacking. Rather a quality of showmanship is involved, with its reliance all on the response of an audience to illusions.
“In some of the most celebrated instances of imposture, it indeed appears that the fraud was successful only because many others as well as the perpetrator had a hunger to believe in the fraud, and that any success of such fraudulence depended in fact on strong social as well as individual factors and especial receptivity to the trickery.
To this extent those on whom the fraudulence is imposed are not only victims but unconscious conspirators. Its success too is partly a matter of timing. Such combinations of imposturous talent and a peculiar susceptibility of the times to believe in the swindler, who presents the deceptive means of salvation, may account for the great impostures of history. There are, however, instances of the repeated perpetration of frauds under circumstances which give evidence of a precise content that may seem independent of social factors….
“It is the extraordinary and continued pressure in the impostor to live out his fantasy that demands explanation, a living out which has the force of a delusion, (and in the psychotic may actually appear in that form), but it is ordinarily associated with the ‘formal’ awareness that the claims are false. The sense of reality is characterized by a peculiarly sharp, quick perceptiveness, extraordinarily immediate keenness and responsiveness, especially in the area of the imposture. The over-all utility of the sense of reality is, however, impaired. What is striking in many impostors is that, although they are quick to pick up details and nuances in the lives and activities of those whom they simulate and can sometimes utilize these with great adroitness, they are frequently so utterly obtuse to many ordinary considerations of fact that they give the impression of mere brazenness or stupidity in many aspects of their life peripheral to their impostures….
“The impostor has, then, a specially sharpened sensitivity within the area of his fraud, and identity toward the assumption of which he has a powerful unconscious pressure, beside which his conscious wish, although recognizable, is relatively slight. The unconscious drive heightens his perceptions in a focused area and permits him to ignore or deny other elements of reality which would ordinarily be considered matters of common sense. It is this discrepancy in abilities which makes some impostors such puzzling individuals. Skill and persuasiveness are combined with utter foolishness and stupidity.
“In well-structured impostures this may be described as a struggle between two dominant identities in the individual: the temporarily focused and strongly assertive imposturous one, and the frequently amazingly crude and poorly knit one from which the impostor has emerged. In some instances, however, it is also probable that the imposture cannot be sustained unless there is emotional support from someone who especially believes in and nourishes it. The need for self-betrayal may then he one part of the tendency to revert to a less demanding, more easily sustainable personality, particularly if support is withdrawn.
“The impostor seems to flourish on the success of his exhibitionism. Enjoyment of the limelight and inner triumph of ‘putting something over’ seems inherent, and bespeak the closeness of imposture to voyeurism. Both aspects are represented: pleasure in watching while the voyeur himself is invisible; exultation in being admired and observed as a spectacle. It seems as if the impostor becomes temporarily convinced of the rightness of his assumed character in proportion to the amount of attention he is able to gain from it.
“In the lives of impostors there are circumscribed areas of reaction which approach the delusional. These are clung to when the other elements of the imposture have been relinquished….
“Once an imposturous goal has been glimpsed, the individual seems to behave without need for consistency, but to strive rather for the supremacy of the gains from what can be acted out with sufficient immediate gratification to convince others. For the typical impostor, an audience is absolutely essential. It is from the confirming reaction of his audience that the impostor gets a ‘realistic’ sense of self, a value greater than anything he can otherwise achieve. It is the demand for an audience in which the (false) self is reflected that causes impostures often to become of social significance. Both reality and identity seem to the impostor to be strengthened rather than diminished by the success of the fraudulence of his claims….
“The impostor seems to be repeatedly seeking confirmation of his assumed identity to overcome his sense of helplessness or incompleteness. It is my impression that this is the secret of his appeal to others, and that often especially conscientious people are ‘taken in’ and other impostors as well attracted because of the longing to return to that happy state of omnipotence which adults have had to relinquish….
