These two terms are much conflated in common parlance, but there was a difference - and an important one at that: The "Authoritarian" regime would demand that its subjects obey the will of the authorities, that the subjects do what they are told. But the "Totalitarian" regime took this a step further in that it placed its demand not just on external behaviors but on the "total" person. In other words, not only was the regime concerned with what you did publicly, but it was at least as concerned with what you did privately, and in the end, who you were yourself. This "total" claim of the individual, by American standards, is exponentially more horrifying than the simple obedience model, which, after all, most Americans learn to cope with creatively during their school years.
I am reminded of the dramatic tale of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who was very nearly dragged off by the secret police because of his composition of "unpatriotic" music. For those of us who studied Shostakovich, we learned that hidden in his music were secret pieces of "rebellion" couched in music that would certainly be approved of by the State. The almost gruelingly sarcastic marches and "triumphs" that Shostakovich was famous for upheld and took the piss out of the State at the same time. Here was a man who was under an Authoritarian regime and yet kept his own personal beliefs for himself.
But for the Totalitarian, such as Hitler, apparently, even this public/private division was intolerable. The Totalitarian demanded not just total obedience, but total "conversion" to the cause of the State.
Last month, David Brooks wrote an unpretentious and gloomy piece about the way things go in Washington, specifically regarding the dismissal of General Stanley McChrystal because of a politically gauche rant he made to a reporter. This reporter has been lionized by others in the press - particularly in the blogosphere - for his willingness to expose conflict and internal contradictions within the government, supposedly in the grand tradition of American muckraking journalism. But I tend to side with Brooks, in this case at least.
Yes, the general was off the mark, and yes the president had no choice but to dismiss him. And yet for all the pomp and righteousness, we must ask if this inevitable result was in the best interests of the country. It seems to me that at best it was a wash. McChrystal was good at his job and was willing to take on a thankless one. He is being replaced by David Petraeus, who is also good at his job, but whose approach will likely be basically the same.
This was not Watergate, Whitewater, Iran Contra, or even Monica Lewinsky. This was a mouthing off by someone who has arguably the most stressful (and hopelessly impossible) job in the world. Is it a sign of Special Ops exceptionalism and arrogance? Maybe. But if anyone has earned the right to feel exceptional and arrogant, it is the guys who run special ops. I know the rest of us couch potatoes and weekend warriors would like to think more highly of ourselves, but get real guys - we're not in their league.
And the collateral damage goes well beyond the exceptional McChrystal, and so I would argue it is not a wash: The people most worthy of running the country - because of their own exceptional diligence, courage, intelligence, or candor - these people will not volunteer for the thankless jobs anymore, for fear of being torn down in the same way that McChrystal and so many others have been in recent decades. I, for one, am ten times more intelligent - to say nothing of more charismatic- than the drones that serve today in Congress. And so are you. But will you and I ever run for public office? In the words of the Minority Leader - Hell No!
So in this, Brooks has it exact. He writes:
But the exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important.
Another scalp is on the wall. Government officials will erect even higher walls between themselves and the outside world. The honest and freewheeling will continue to flee public life, and the cautious and calculating will remain.
I think you can see where I'm going with this. The old Totalitarian model made demands on its citizenry to conform both externally and internally to the demands of the State - however arbitrary those demands might have been. But in America, the freest nation in the history of Earth, we have somehow managed to invert this system: We The People, the demos, have deemed necessary to appropriate every last drop of our governors' lives as our own property. We The People have become the Totalitarians. It is a staggering inversion and a terrifying indictment about the universality of tyranny - that the freest souls in the world yet demand authoritarianism - nay, Totalitarianism - for themselves over whomever they can have it.
And in a Democracy, where the leaders are in fact the servants, we are shown that it is the leaders who must yet bear the yoke of our arbitrary morals, prejudices, and cultural demands. They, the few, are the subjects of the many, whose hearts and minds and thoughts we must control even as we (pretend to) control their public actions. And this pretension is perhaps the saddest judgment on modern Democracy - that our interest in and engagement with the vital public actions of our leaders aren't nearly as accountable to our consciences as the tribulations and specifics of their personal lives.
It is possible that Brooks may have been spreading McChyrstal into this taint with too broad a knife. This was not a sex scandal or a gambling problem (or for that matter, polio), but was something closer to military insubordination, a true crime on the government's own terms. But the point is well made and should be well considered as we move into the second 3rd of our 3rd century as a grand political experiment. What happens to totalitarian systems historically? Do they all break? And in a democracy, who is left to do the breaking? What leader will lead the uprising against the tyranny of the people?
I suspect it will not happen in the obvious way, but in a subtle, almost silent way, with the draining away of the virtuous, "the honest and freewheeling," from public life. Without adequate leaders, the public can not but decline. As always in a democracy, the demos must hold itself accountable to itself. Are we really willing to do that? Even, as Churchill suggested, after we have exhausted every other possibility? Or would we still prefer to take credit for our leaders' public successes and stick them with the bill for their own private failings? We Americans do like our cake, but how much of it will we eat too before we explode our own selves?
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