Cult of Personality

People think the cult of personality is something new, a relic of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The only difference between the 1780s and 2017 is the speed with which information -- and scandal -- are disseminated.

Victoria Claflin Woodhull was not yet 35 in 1872 when she decided to run for President of the United States. She was not allowed to vote, but she was determined to vote, citing an eloquent argument based on the U. S. Constitution and building on what had already been written by like-minded men and women. Woodhull was the first woman to petition Congress on this matter and present her well reasoned arguments before that august body.

An entrepreneur, the first woman stockbroker in history, and a vocal advocate for women's rights and free love, Woodhull was determined to push women's suffrage forward and gain the vote for women. She also pushed her feminist agenda for free love and an end to government deciding marriage, divorce, and every other aspect of a woman's life, especially with regard to what was permissible in modern society. If men could marry and carry on illicit affairs, then women should be allowed to determine their own fate as well. It was Woodhull's version of quid pro quo and met with mixed acceptance.

One might say that Woodhull's publication of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's adulterous affair with Elizabeth Tilton and subsequent arrest was over the top in regards to punishment and using the U. S. mail to circulate the issue in Woodhull & Claflin Weekly's edition containing the details of the affair an obscenity as petty as it was political. The fact that Woodhull was a presidential candidate and unable to cast her unsanctioned vote because of her incarceration on charges that were specious at best is still notable, as is her choice of Frederick Douglass, a presidential elector from New York in the Electoral College, as her running mate for Vice-President. Douglass never acknowledged his candidacy nor did he attend the nominating convention. Woodhull ran under the Equal Rights Party banner.

Woodhull did garner votes, as one man from Texas claimed, stating he voted for Woodhull as a vote against Ulysses S. Grant, who eventually won the presidency in 1872. She received no electoral votes and all votes for her were not counted. She ran again unsuccessfully in 1884 and 1892. In the meantime, Woodhull was bankrupted by her opposition in the Women's Suffrage Movement by women like Susan B. Anthony who did not like her position or her politics.

As Otto von Bismarck stated, "Politics is the art of the possible," a sentiment echoed famously by Eva Peron in the opera penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Looking at George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as John F. Kennedy, can we really not see how the cult of the personality is the bedrock of politics? The Cult of the Personality did not begin with Barack Obama or Donald Trump and its roots are strong and deep throughout the history of politics in the United States of America as it has been throughout the history of the world, from Julius Caesar all the way back to Agamemnon and beyond. Victoria Claflin Woodhull is in memorable company and not only for her presidential candidacy but for her beliefs in communism, free love, and business and for her business acumen and refusal to bow to pressure, even when she was jailed.

That is all. Disperse.

Death and Immortality Before 30

I've been reading about the Persian empire, Sparta, Greece, and all things ancient. I even took a little while to watch some of Troy, which I have already seen, in 2004 when it debuted and several times since then. I like the scene where Achilles (Brad Pitt) kills Boagrius with a single sword thrust into his shoulder. Pure poetry, and not just because the 41-year-old Pitt was very buff and cut. That brings me to the point of this post -- the age of the actors and modern perceptions of what constitutes maturity and responsibility.

In ancient times, about the 4th or 5th century BCE, people didn't live as long as they do now. They were promised 3 score and 10 (70 years) because Christ has not been born and his words reported until several decades after his death in the early 1st century. Christ was 32 when he began his ministry, a mature man of his time, and at an age when most men had married, had children, and were probably expecting grandchildren. Thirty-two was well advanced in years even then. Even before he was crucified.

The world was a violent place. Wars were fought not from drones and but remote control in armored vehicles, but on the ground, face to face, and sword to spear. Men died early and they went to war early. Hollywood would have us believe that men were still children in their teens when in fact many men had been blodded at 16 or even earlier. Brad Pitt, no matter his physique, would have been an old man.

Think about it. If Ulysses had gone to war at 40, he would not have returned to his wife and 20-year-old son until he was 60. Not possible. He would have been in his late teens early twenties when he went to war and his wife barely 16. Even in the Middle Ages, women were given in marriage at 14 to 16 and were often betrothed before they could walk in many cases, but usually around the age of 3 in royal families. The poor married early as well and were often dead by 35. Forty was ancient in times when work was hard and food scarce during lean times. Even among royalty, women were worn out by childbirth, often having a child every year or two. All that birthing and nursing and breeding took its toll and childbirth was dangerous for child and mother, both often dying of fever, unsanitary conditions, or simply the luck of the draw -- or the favor or disfavor of the gods.

People in today's world equate maturity and responsibility with age, usually above 30, and often not at all in the 60s and 70s if current social conditions continue. Children are coddled until well into their 20s and often not released from mama's apron strings even in their twenties. Life happened much earlier -- and lasted all too little.

Men didn't need to go to the gym to get buff; they worked out with sword, spear, shield, and fighting from the earliest ages, going to war as soon as they were men, usually between 14 and 16. That is not something considered or even countenanced in our modern world. Children fighting other children or men in their 20s that have survived a war or three. Kings were younger as well, though some did live to the ripe old age of 40 and even fifty if they didn't actually fight on the battlefield but stayed behind the lines. Men -- and women -- learned early about life and began living it as soon as they could stand up and prove they could hold a sword. It is likely the real Achilles was in his late teens or early twenties when he sailed for Troy and fought during the 10 yars of the siege. He probably looked a lot more like the Brad Pitt who starred as Chris on Another World and would have been dead at the age he starred with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in Thelma & Louise at 28. Young as he looked in those days, he would have been a dead man come the end of the seige at Troy, or very nearly the end.

The world is so different from the one that Hollywood portrays with old men like Sean Bean and Brian Cox playing the kings of Ithaca and Mycenae. It was a very different world. Helen would have been barely 16, or maybe even 17 or 18 when she wed Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother, and he not more than 2 or 3 years older. Those facts put a very different face on things as they were instead of how we see them.

And think of the cost of provisioning an army of 50,000 men for 10 years. They would have drunk rivers dry and descended like a plague of locusts on the fields around Troy. Foraging parties would have had to invade the surrounding countryside and relieve the peasants of their livestock and harvests, and may even have had to settle in and sow the fields around Troy and tend the crops while fishing the sea and surrounding rivers. The countryside would have suffered as the army foraged farther and farther afield to supply the men with sufficient food to keep fighting for 10 years. And there would ahve been children born to the women captured as slaves or brought in as camp followers. An army 50,000 strong would have had great needs and been none to polite about filling them.
It doesn't bear to think on the cost of war in those times, the great distances traveled, the hardships, the loss, the disease, and the devastation to the countryside where they fought. On foot or in chariots in the mud, the blood, and the sand beneath the ever present brazen stare of the sun. Troy is part of modern day Turkey and a long way to row from Greece to their shores, which is why it took 10 years for Odysseus to get back to Ithaca.

War is not the magnificent spectacle we thrill to watch on the big screen and war in ancient times was a far more brutal undertaking. It is obvious we cannot put things into ancient perspectives and all those old actors must either get jobs in the private sector or work behind the scenes while children fight their pretend wars and romance their pubescent lovers on the screen. The world has grown up, but our view of the ancient world has been twisted into something beyond our understanding.

I like movies as much as anyone, sometimes even more than most, but at least I understand it is make believe and only the stuff of modern day dreams. The truth would be far more difficult for many to take, especially as people seem to be intent on keeping the children irresponsible and childish well past the age of consent -- at least in terms of ancient social mores and practices. Still, it bears keeping in mind. The world then is far different than we imagine in the insulated and protected bubble in which man -- and woman -- lives.

That is all. Disperse.