One of the privileges of being an American is that we reject the very idea of privilege. Or at least, we claim to. By this I mean that the idea of inherited privilege is anathema to our creed; the very idea of kingship repulses us. At least, it used to.
I wonder what our founders would make of millions of Americans obsessively and compulsively being drawn to the spectacle of a royal wedding. In England, no less. Of course, since fewer than half of Americans know that we fought our revolution against England, I suppose the point is moot.
Our revolution was a revolt against they very pompery and human-worship that so many of us were drawn to this week. But over the course of a quarter-millennium, it seems, we have been drawn into the same lust of mindless and elitist celebrity worship that our ancestors were so desperate to escape.
There are many reasons for this. Historic ignorance and amnesia doesn't help. Neither does television. But at the roots of this charade are two awful truths.
The first truth is that the Americans who are drawn to this spectacle apparently give no thought to why this nice young man (and I have no reason to doubt that the prince is a nice young man) is so wealthy.
Where did his family get its money? Well, slavery, slaughter, burnings-at-the-stake, and conquest in general, to give just a few examples. And while the current prince can not be blamed for the actions of his ancestors, we can be blamed for worshiping the family, power, office, and idea that this nice young man now represents.
The second truth is that our nation has mutated into a state in which the power of the president is something that kings of old would have lusted after mightily. In fact, tragically enough, the office of the American president today is far more powerful than the office of the prince and prime minister of England combined.
And perhaps our tawdry love affair with authoritarianism, which is obvious to everyone but ourselves, has subliminally conditioned many of us to be perfectly comfortable worshiping a man rather than an idea.
As an historian, I would like to think that I studiously avoid the pitfalls of idealizing the past. And while I may not have wanted to live earlier in the history of our nation, I do firmly believe that the consciousness of the citizens in those days was in some ways preferable to ours.
It is impossible to conceive millions of Americans 100 years ago obsessing over the details of the prince of England's marriage. It seems that as time passes, Americans show themselves to be just as prone to cattle mentality as anyone else. Great danger lies in our refusal to admit this fact.
It was said during World War II that if we lost, "we'd all be speaking German". And if we'd lost the American Revolution, we'd all be speaking the King's English. Turns out we are anyway.
What matters? Where is the line between informed citizens and TMI? Between honesty and gossip? Between documentary and propaganda?
In the photo above, a South Vietnamese police officer is summarily executing a Viet Cong soldier in broad daylight in the middle of a major street in Saigon, the capital city of South Vietnam.
The killer is an American ally, a uniformed representative of a "nation" (South Vietnam) that no longer exists. South Vietnam no longer exists. That simple and immutable fact should quiet all the revisionists who insist we did not lose the Vietnam War.
So the killer is our guy. His uniform, gun, and bullets were paid for by American taxpayers. He is clearly shooting an unarmed, handcuffed man in the head in the middle of the street. The viewer can safely assume that the victim had no trial.
Does that matter? What about the victim? A Viet Cong soldier, who according to the government of South Vietnam was a simple terrorist. And indeed, men like the victim, dressed in civilian clothes and indistinguishable from anyone else, regularly murdered civilians in South Vietnam.
Did the victim personally blow up a nightclub? Did he murder a nun? Did he torture an American POW? Did he slit the throats of the killer's wife and children 10 minutes before the photograph was taken? Does that matter?
When we study history, we need to know where to draw the line. Like most lines, this line is arbitrary, because any attempt to define an immutable barrier leads to madness or fascism.
When we see a photo of a police officer shooting an unarmed and handcuffed man in the head, do any other details matter?
It is an impossible question to answer. But like most questions which are impossible to answer, this is a case where the most important task is in the asking of the question itself.
Perhaps the ultimate quest among historians, much as it is among physicists, is the quest for the grand unifying theory. What one thing is common to all that has happened? What drives history?
Is is the migration of tribes? The simple accidents of germs and natural resources? Man's quest for freedom? A battle between religions? All of those theories have elements of truth, as do nearly all theories. But the truth is perhaps simpler. And sweeter.
Two of the turning points of modern history were caused by man's lust for......condiments. Spices. The expedition of Columbus and the Cuban Missile Crisis were both driven by the urge for more tasteful food.
Of course Columbus did not "discover" the Americas. But his journey to America represented the point of no return in the great human rediscovery of an elemental truth: there was one Earth of finite size and all mankind came from the same place upon it. This rediscovery is still a work in progress.
But Columbus' journey was not driven by this epic and primordial quest; it was driven by the urge for spices. Cinnamon. Pepper. Simple as that. We call Native Americans "Indians" because Columbus thought he was in the Indies, today Indonesia, which was also known as the spice islands.
Before Columbus discovered that the Natives had gold, he was horrified by their lack of nutmeg, terrified of returning to his royal sponsors with no crushed red pepper.
Just as Columbus was a turning point in the story of mankind, the Cuban Missile Crisis, played out upon one of the very islands Columbus "discovered" was the most dangerous moment in the history of man.
And this conflict, despite Kennedy's flighty rhetoric and murderous impulses, despite Castro's megalomania, and despite Khrushchev's bluster, was about sugar.
The reason mankind almost committed suicide over Cuba (or rather the reason John Fitzgerald Kennedy thought this to be a worthy gamble) was that Fidel Castro seized American sugar plantations in Cuba.
American businesses had bought up the best land in Cuba for pennies on the dollar and had profited mightily from the labor and land and natural resources of Cuba. Fidel Castro dictatorially (and rightly) claimed this to be unacceptable and "stole" this land from the American "owners".
This was the turning point in America's attitudes towards Cuba, and it nearly became the beginning of the end of the world. And for what? For sugar. How sweet it is.
One of the privileges of being an American is that we reject the very idea of privilege. Or at least, we claim to. By this I mean that the idea of inherited privilege is anathema to our creed; the very idea of kingship repulses us. At least, it used to.
