If this goes on ... | United States |Axisoflogic.com

“I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy … censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.

Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”

— Robert Heinlein, If This Goes On, 1940

Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988) was an American science fiction writer. While today much of his work might be suggestive of misogyny, racism, egotism, at the time of his writing he was very much in tune with the world around him. If he were still alive, he might defend himself by claiming that he was only reflecting his reality. He truly saw himself as a champion of equal rights and equal opportunity, even if his characters can seem cringeworthy, when viewed by modern eyes.

He would be correct - it is in the same vein that today much of Mark Twain’s writing would offend. I don’t mean to conflate Heinlein and Twain, just to note the environments in which they wrote are exactly what reasonable people should expect that they would reflect in their writing.

Heinlein earned a reputation as a forward thinker and is credited with ‘inventing’ or describing many mechanical gadgets and tools that did not exist at the time as well as some more homely inventions - like the waterbed which he described decades before they existed, for instance. Or waldos - the mechanical hands you've probably seen in movies that scientists use to manipulate toxic or radioactive objects through leaded glass. ['Waldos' came from the eponymist protagonist of one of his short stories. Waldo suffered from myasthenia gravis and was physically unable to live in Earth's gravity but he invented the mechanical hands on his way to inventing a space craft to orbit Earth at an elevation that would allow his enfeebled muscles to work as if he no longer had the illness.]

One of Heinlein’s novels found its way on to the syllabus of sociology classes in a lot of colleges and universities (I know, I studied it myself). The novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, was, at it’s simplest level, the story of a man born on Mars and now come to Earth, to a post-World War III United States - which is now ruled by powerful religions.

Having been raised by Martians, this man's knowledge of humans is almost childlike - hence the title of the book (a quote from the Book of Exodus).

The point of this article is not to speak about Stranger in a Strange Land, but one can’t seriously consider Heinlein without referring to it. As a favour to anyone reading this piece, I’d encourage you to seek it out and read it. Beware that there are two versions - the one Heinlein’s editors permitted him to publish, and his unedited version that was published three years after his death by his widow, Virginia. Heinlein considered the latter to be vastly superior, and I agree.

Future History
Regardless of how his work is viewed today, there can be little doubt that Heinlein was an accomplished writer, with a broad sense of where the world had been, where it was, and where it was likely headed. And with that latter point in mind, he began to construct what he called Future History. It’s a series he returned to many times through the years although he didn’t live along enough to complete the work and fill in the gaps.

But one story in particular has some relevance today. In 1940, Heinlein introduced a character named Nehemiah Scudder - a man as unpleasant as that name suggests. Scudder was a ‘super-Christian’, from what today might be called the ‘fanatical religious right’. The novella shows what might happen to Christianity in the United States given mass communications, applied psychology, and a hysterical populace.

In that first written appearance of Nehemiah Scudder in 1940, we see him becoming President of the United States and then in 2016, the First Prophet of the United States. Sounding vaguely familiar yet?

The United States and, by extension, the rest of the world, goes through a period akin to the Dark Ages. Fans of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale will see a similar world.

And here’s the thing: If Heinlein was any kind of prophet of what was to come, there is not much comfort in knowing that Scudder’s reign - and that of his successors - doesn’t end until the people of the Earth finally rise up to reclaim humanity. That is all described in a collection of stories called Revolt in 2100. I think we can all agree we don’t want to wait that long.

I’m going to let Heinlein speak for himself here. From the Afterword to the Revolt in 2100 collection (written in 1953):

As for … the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this, our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past.

It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics ... indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.

Nevertheless this business of legislating religious beliefs into law has never been more than sporadically successful in this country ... The country is split up into such a variety of faiths and sects that a degree of uneasy tolerance now exists from expedient compromise; the minorities constitute a majority of opposition against each other.

Could it be otherwise here? Could any one sect obtain a working majority at the polls and take over the country? Perhaps not — but a combination of a dynamic evangelist, television, enough money, and modern techniques of advertising and propaganda might make Billy Sunday’s efforts look like a corner store compared to Sears Roebuck.

Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negrosim, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening.

Pretty potent thinking almost 70 years ago. I suspect he could be rolling in his grave to realize how close he has come to getting it right.

But there's one more thing in play: Fear.

When fear takes over, even those who believe in openness and originality shut down psychologically. At the very moment when open eyes and minds and originality are needed, mass media have crumbled and relegated their offerings to op-ed soapboxes of mindless hacks who re-word the same whines, over and over.

If this goes on ...

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