Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Five Centuries Ago: Henry VIII. Today: Donald the Deplorable.

The Maryland Renaissance Festival begins this month and, if you think a 500 year reset is too far from present reality, then you haven't kept up on your English history. While reading through Will Durant's agonizing rendition of how the West was spun, The Story of Civilization: The Reformation, the reign of Henry VIII of England takes the pathos prize, so far. The calamitous king had so much in common with America's current head of state that the parallels kept popping into my consciousness while mourning over every page. The Renaissance Festival may have had no intention of shining a light on our current political fiasco when it selected a storyline that brings the old ogre and his court back in the flesh, but let's hope the audience doesn't miss the irony.
Henry VIII and the Barber Surgeons, by Hans Holbein the Younger. Wikimedia Commons

Historians recognized the pattern much earlier than I, and published those observations in Newsweek, Foreign Policy, and The Economist, as well as this e-zine and another, Pajiba. In case you missed those, let me add my own, with inevitable repetition of some of the previous commentary.

The upshot of my historical observations is that USAnians (as Amy Siskind keeps warning us) may find themselves ruled by an autocratic regime before they know it. Here we go:
  • H.VIII's administration suffered from the upheaval of sudden dismissal (or worse) of numerous high-level officials, as it pleased the king.
  • H.VIII was enabled to appropriate unprecedented power to himself by a complicit Parliament
  • The self-absorbed church paid deference to the tyrant, even as he despoiled their holdings.
  • H.VIII married multiple times.
  • H.VIII's focus was on prolonging the Tudor dynasty through a male heir.
  • H.VIII denigrated faiths other than his own.
  • H.VIII brought autocracy to England by audacious and unprincipled domestic power grabs.
  • Thomas Cromwell, his chief assistant (a role formerly claimed by Stephen Bannon), made it his main aim "to make the King supreme over every phase of English life."
  • H.VIII engaged in futile wars.
  • By personally participating in these wars, H.VIII showed that he was a militarist.
  • H.VIII lived extravagantly and his greed waxed larger, even as his people suffered lack.
  • H.VIII rewarded his political supporters with ill-gotten wealth.
In the bitter end, the King plundered monasteries and guilds through appropriation and taxation. A modern U.S. version might entail levies on non-profits and unions, but might include any sector with a surplus. We should be wary of any tax bill that doesn't detail sources of revenue or budgets that underestimate costs. Rationalization of extreme fiscal measures by a policy of uncompromising victory over military enemies (even if the money doesn't make it to the front lines) looks like the newest stratagem the White House might employ.

I needn't detail further the parallels with Donald J. 'Blowhard." If history is a guide to forecasting, then the fact that freedom and prosperity became ever more rare as Henry pomped on gives us reason to act quickly in saving our country by squelching this upstart tyrant before he can inflict further damage on America's psyche and treasures.

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