Looking for a residue of good sense

When I was a young teen, I remember reading widely out of my parent's book cases. Whenever I'd run through whatever I'd gotten out for myself from the library, I'd poke around in their shelves. 

One volume I remember encountering was Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat. The early '60s of the last century was an optimistic time in this country. We worried about The Bomb (as we should have) but basically were still coasting on America's self-satisfaction over winning what we called World War II. Bloch's musings seemed obscure -- proof, if of anything, that France was a strange country.

John Ganz at Unpopular Front has returned to discuss Bloch in our Trumpian moment, prompted by France's current president: 

On Saturday, French president Emmanuel Macron announced that the historian Marc Bloch would be inducted into the Pathéon. Bloch, a veteran of both World Wars, was one of the founders of the Annales school of historiography, which brought a deep social and economic perspective to historical studies. A Jew of Alsatian origin, he joined the Resistance and was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, tortured, and ultimately executed. His book Strange Defeat, written after his demobilization in 1940 and published posthumuously in 1946, is perhaps the “postmortem” of all postmortems: a reflection on the collapse of a proud military tradition and a great democracy. For Bloch, the ruling élite of France failed: its generals, the press, the politicians, and its educators “were incapable of thinking in terms of a new war.” [From Bloch's little book.:]

It was not only in the field that intellectual causes lay at the root of our defeat. As a nation we had been content with in­complete knowledge and imperfectly thought-out ideas. Such an attitude is not a good preparation for military success.

Our system of government demands the participation of the masses. The destiny of the People is in their own hands, and I see no reason for believing that they are not perfectly capable of choos­ing rightly. But what effort had been made to supply them with that minimum of clear and definite information without which no rational conduct is possible? To that question the answer is ‘None’. In no way did our so-called democratic system so signally fail.

That particular dereliction of duty constituted the most heinous crime of our self-styled democrats. The matter would be less serious if what we had to deplore were merely the lies and half-truths inspired by party loyalties openly avowed. Wicked these may be, but, on the whole, they can be fairly easily discounted. Far graver is the fact that our national Press, claiming to provide an impartial news-service, was sailing under false colours. Many newspapers, even those which openly wore the livery of party beliefs, were secretly enslaved to unavowed and, often, squalid interests. Some of them were controlled by foreign influences.

I do not deny that the common sense of the ordinary reader did, to some extent, counterbalance this, but only at the cost of developing an attitude of scepticism to all propaganda, printed and broadcast alike.

It would be a great mistake to think that the elector always votes as ‘his’ [accustomed] paper tells him to. I have known more than one humble citizen who votes almost automatically against the views expressed by his chosen rag, and it may be that this refusal to be stampeded by printed insincerities is among the more consoling elements of our con­temporary national life. It does, at least, offer some hope for the future. Still, it must be admitted that such an attitude pro­vides a poor intellectual training for those who are called upon to understand what is at stake in a vast world struggle, to judge rightly of the coming storm, and to arm themselves adequately against its violence.

Quite deliberately—as one can see by reading Mein Kampf or the records of Rauschning’s conversations— Hitler kept the truth from his servile masses. Instead of intel­lectual persuasion he gave them emotional suggestion.

For us there is but one set of alternatives. Either, like the Germans, we must turn our people into a keyboard on which a few leaders can play at will (but who are those leaders? The playing of those at present on the stage is curiously lacking in resonance); or we can so train them that they may be able to collaborate to the full with the representatives in whose hands they have placed the reins of government.

At the present stage of civilization this dilemma admits of no middle term. . . . The masses no longer obey. They follow either because they have been hypnotized or because they know.

The paragraph breaks in this quotation are mine. I think they made it easier to read and I trust they do not distort the original.

I do think there is truth in Bloch's concern: is there a residue of good sense in the people of this land which, alongside leadership yet to emerge, can turn back the onrushing tide of fascist shit? I suspect yes, but the next few years will be ugly. In controversy, we need to learn to be kind with those, somehow on our own side, with whom we have disagreements. That's hard, because we are frightened. But courage is required.