What Would Mark Twain, the Anti-Imperialist, Say?
By Elizabeth Huergo | July 30, 2024 |
“To the Person Sitting in Darkness” is a demanding read by today’s standards. Though perhaps the difficulty makes Twain’s essay more important now, when emotive images (memes) have usurped argument and skimming has replaced reading. Pathos is not logos, and reading is not a form of mental hang gliding. Another difficulty is that the essay is anchored in history. All literary texts are anchored in history. Some, however, seem to be more easily untethered. This is not one of those.
To appreciate the satire, we have to appreciate the political events Twain witnessed, as well as the language used by those in power to represent those events to the voting public. Twain was a member of the Anti-Imperialist League, a group of like-minded thinkers who had the audacity to argue against militarization and colonialism, against self-serving hypocrisy and untrammeled violence. “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” was published in 1901 in the North American Review and it reflects some of the ideas and values associated with the League.
In February of 1898, President McKinley demanded that every US citizen “remember the Maine.” Today the phrase might be emblazoned on a tee-shirt or a trucker cap. Then, as now, the point was not to remember. The point was to forget the slaughter the US was inflicting on civilians in China, South Africa, the Philippines, and Cuba.
The explosion on the USS Maine, anchored in Havana Harbor, killed 266 of its 354 servicemen. The explosion was not the work of a rabid Cuban or Spanish terrorist. It was caused by a faulty boiler. McKinley and his Administration knew that. They recruited Randolph Hearst (think Rupert Murdock) and lied, turning a hideous and tragic accident into a political ruse.
They manufactured the perceptions and so the consent of the public.
Political ruses work, and, in fairness to McKinley, we can think of other cynical, propagandistic manipulations of language in the name of democracy–e.g., the false claim about the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin, the vial of yellow cake proffered as justification for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
By April of 1898, the ruse had given McKinley the leverage he needed to ask Congress for authority to intervene militarily in Cuba, arguing that “[t]he only hope of relief and repose from a condition which can no longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba.”
“Enforced pacification”? That’s the sort of political euphemism that would make Orwell wince. McKinley wanted Cuba for the same monetary and military reasons Jefferson wanted it just after the Louisiana Purchase. Congress complied with McKinley’s demands and offered the Teller Amendment, which specifically states that the US has no “intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island except for the pacification thereof.”
Having already misrepresented the deaths of 266 servicemen for his own political gain, McKinley gave Congress the middle finger. He called for 125,000 volunteers and a naval blockade of the northern coast of Cuba, knowing his actions would provoke Spain into declaring war on the US, which it did. In the US, this conflict is referred to as the Spanish-American War. Cubans, using less euphemism, refer to this event as the U.S. intervention in Cuba’s War of Independence from imperial Spain.
If you don’t quite get how galling McKinley’s illegal intervention was, imagine the French empire working to destroy the colonists’ struggle for independence so that it could then fight Britain for all the land east of the Appalachians. If that’s still too abstract, consider two abusive boyfriends amped on steroids fighting each other in order to dominate a fiercely independent single woman (with cats). The right to self-determination is a human right, whether you are an island or a woman.
The difference between right and wrong, between legal and illegal didn’t deter McKinley. He continued to make lofty claims about the fight for democracy, though the US victory in Manila Bay, Philippines, revealed the rapacious underside of those claims to anyone paying attention. For the Philippines, like Cuba, was also waging a war for independence against Spain.
In “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” Twain asks if there is a difference between the brand of propaganda that is “strictly for Export” and what is reserved for “Home Consumption”. Twain answers in the affirmative:
Privately and confidentially, [that bale of hay] is merely an outside cover, gay and pretty and attractive, displaying the special patterns of our Civilization which we reserve for Home Consumption, while inside the bale is the Actual Thing that the Customer Sitting in Darkness buys with his blood and tears and land and liberty. That Actual Thing is, indeed, Civilization, but it is only for Export.
Twain makes clear his disdain for language that hides meaning and intention, drawing a distinction between the “[hay] bale” of propaganda that is “strictly for Export” and what is reserved for “Home Consumption.” He insists that we question the hypocrisy of political language, the language that for Orwell “name[s] things without calling up mental pictures of them” and so induces us to drift, unable to recognize the ethical schism between act and representation (“Politics and the English Language”).
Twain reminds me of Don Quijote at times. In a corrupt world that insists up is down and the real is fake, he persists in correcting anyone who will listen that, no, actually down is up and fake is real. He addresses Christians who have confused the desire to spread the gospels with militarism and colonialism.
“[S]hall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?” Twain asks. “Shall we bang right ahead in our old-time, loud, pious way, and commit the new century to the game; or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first?”
He is addressing the worst sorts of hypocrites, the ones hellbent on confusing the line between Church and State.
What would Twain say today about the air-brushed surface of the hay bale and the “Actual Thing” wrapped in its core? I think Twain would point out that the distinction between outside and inside, export and import no longer serves. Today bellicose colonial adventures that used to be directed toward other countries are now directed by the billionaire class against the rest of us. Forget national boundaries. The billionaire class, the roughly 100 people on this planet who determine the lives the rest of us will lead, has fealty only to the accumulation of greater wealth. The “Actual Thing” inside the hay bale is an authoritarian dystopia.
Far-fetched? According to the media theorist Douglas Kushkoff in The Guardian, the superrich are very concerned about “social unrest, a nuclear explosion, a solar storm, or an unstoppable virus” that might leave them with less stuff. While they can afford to build the most elaborate bunkers, the possibility of an apocalyptic collapse caused by climate change or nuclear war is causing them some consternation. How long could they survive on their own? How would they pay their mercenary armies? How would they purchase air to breathe? The whole thing sounds like a regression to feudalism.
Before we can make a conscious turn, we must learn to distinguish between information and propaganda, and to develop a conscious language that points to the emperor’s naked body on parade and calls it “naked” and not “fabricationally challenged.” Language matters, then and now. That’s Twain’s point, and we should respect the energy and clarity with which throughout his career he took up the most difficult topics of his time. That’s what writers should do. Whether a politician offers “enforced pacification” or the lark of living under a dictatorship where we never again have to bother to vote, let’s pay attention because it is only in that moment of understanding that we will be able to decide, individually and collectively, the moral and ethical question of whether a given level of cupidity on the part of any emperor is acceptable.
Elizabeth Huergo was born in Havana and immigrated to the United States at an early age as a political refugee. A published poet and story writer, she lives in Virginia. The Death of Fidel Perez is her first novel. You can learn more about Elizabeth on her website, and by following her on Twitter.
[coffee]
Elizabeth, your article is important for everyone to read. In these times of government secrecy and global support for the WEF and Davos views, we need more people to explain what’s really happening. Thank you for your efforts.
It’s never too late to learn our real history until it is. Thank you for this eloquent reminder.
I inherited an album of photos from an ancestor who “served” in the Philippines during that war, but only learned what they meant after loaning them to a writer working on a book.
Interestingly the very concept of “anti-imperialism” is itself now a corrupt up is down, fake is real hypocrisy that insists that Ukrainians and Eastern Europeans have no right to agency or autonomy but instead must surrender themselves to the Russian Empire, which isn’t an Empire because it didn’t use boats or its victims weren’t brown or something.
Hello Elizabeth. Thank you very much for a history lesson that I confess to learning for the first time.
“Before we can make a conscious turn, we must learn to distinguish between information and propaganda, and to develop a conscious language that points to the emperor’s naked body on parade and calls it “naked” and not “fabricationally challenged.”
I like that. And we must also learn to distinguish between training and education.
The sad truth is that the dumbing-down of our society through marketing and euphemism has made the “conscious turn” all but out of reach. All over the country, departments in the humanities are being “downsized” or “rightsized,” even terminated. Once, the humanities were fundamental. Those were the studies that educated students to examine ideas and words with an informed, critical eye. The emphasis now in the humanities is often on using language to propagandize for a special interest group. Example: “Authors with backgrounds presumed to be privileged shall not be allowed to graze on pastures belonging to marginalized identities.”
STEM education is also heavily backed by education administrators. Science-technology-engineering-math. These are important studies, but they involve training, not education–and these are the skills of greatest value to billionaire enterprises. The pitch for STEM is to keep the U.S. from falling behind our world competitors, but the real motive is much less high-minded. It has to do with making money, not progress, with keeping corporate cubicles full.
Sorry for climbing on the soap box, but you put it here, and that’s what I did.
What a thoughtful and timely post, Elizabeth! Thank you for the discussion points!
Hi, Barry:
Though I agree with much of what you said, as a former math major, who decided on that course because of the humanity, ahem, of his professors–they were the most gifted, generous, honest and concerned adults I had ever encountered–I take exception to the claim that STEM studies are “mere” training. The key concept in all of those endeavors is problem-solving, and unless all the world’s problems are already known (they aren’t), mere “training” cannot equip researchers in these realms to solve them. They must, yes, be creative, and the best are. (And many of the scientists and mathematicians I have met are incredibly well-read and patrons of the arts.)
That said, I share your horror at the gutting of humanities education. But the undermining of math and science studies happens long before most American students get to college. That is why we have to import so many scientists; the U.S. stopped seriously preparing its students for those careers long ago.
Sorry, Barbara, I meant to reply to Barry’s comment and instead replied to yours. Still getting the hang of this Internet thingy.
Hello David. Thanks for troubling to comment on a comment.
“The key concept in all of those endeavors [STEM studies) is problem-solving, and unless all the world’s problems are already known (they aren’t), mere “training” cannot equip researchers in these realms to solve them.”
Of course I know what you mean, and the shoot-from-the-hip nature of the medium is part of the reason for my comments’ failings. When I taught, my best lit students were physics majors. That said, the humanities at my university were engaged in constant internecine struggles with the colleges of engineering, business, and architecture over credit hours.
Rightly or wrongly, I make a distinction between educating to solve discrete problems with few variables (training), and studies that face students with multiple variables, most of which aren’t quantifiable. My own education was seriously marred by my skill in evading efforts to teach me math and science. In a true sense, I have played without a full deck for that reason. But in a society that rewards tech-and-science learning at the expense of non-quantitative disciplines, I place at least some of the blame for the know-little-or-nothing aspect of so much of the electorate on the neglect of humanities education.
“…many of the scientists and mathematicians I have met are incredibly well-read and patrons of the arts.” You will correct me if I’m wrong, but I would guess that the scientists and mathematicians you meet aren’t the garden-variety kind.
I appreciate this post today, Elizabeth, and have been pondering how we might foster a deeper scrutiny of today’s world–for ourselves and for our writing. I think recognizing that we are all under the dome, as it were, is key. Nothing we see or think is completely immune to bias unless we do our own Descartes’ing and firm up what we know to be true, “I think, therefore I am” style. This truth-finding should include some broad and deep thinking about the nature of chaos. The intersection of language and power can lead to a tornado of chaos that can arrive when conditions are ripe, leap across contexts, and cause a lot of damage, all while threatening our ability to think deeply, critically, and remembering to breathe. Because we move into a more primal mode when the tornado comes. It’s important for us as humans living in this moment to attempt to understand it, but it’s also important for us as storytellers–for character, plot, and theme development, yes, but also in order to reflect the incredible complexities of our time.
Thank you for offering broad and deep truths with every post.
This is so on point, as we struggle through the “news” that isn’t “news”, the propaganda that presents itself day to day…when a liar says THIS and he has lied for years; so is THIS really true, and who will benefit from believing that it is true; and those of us who fight back with our own TRUTHS, are we slowly losing the blessings of our democracy?
Hi Elizabeth:
Come now, “low IQ individual” isn’t a racist slur. You’re being so PC. I mean, even drinking Diet Mountain Dew is considered racist by … “you people.”
The backlash against DEI has create a kind of verbal porn all its own. But I was heartened by your reference to “fabricationally challenged.” The academic left has some things to answer for, especially the policing of speech in the name of a “people-first language.” Though well-intended–people are indeed persons first, not their skin color or disability–what has happened is a dilution of language into mushy abstraction that has arguably made it harder not easier to defend marginalized communities.
In his essay, “The Moral Case Against Equity Language,” George Packer makes this point as follows:
Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” is a nonfiction masterpiece that tells the story of Mumbai slum dwellers with the intimacy of a novel. The book was published in 2012, before the new language emerged:
The One Leg’s given name was Sita. She had fair skin, usually an asset, but the runt leg had smacked down her bride price. Her Hindu parents had taken the single offer they got: poor, unattractive, hard-working, Muslim, old—“half-dead, but who else wanted her,” as her mother had once said with a frown.
Translated into equity language, this passage might read:
Sita was a person living with a disability. Because she lived in a system that centered whiteness while producing inequities among racial and ethnic groups, her physical appearance conferred an unearned set of privileges and benefits, but her disability lowered her status to potential partners. Her parents, who were Hindu persons, accepted a marriage proposal from a member of a community with limited financial resources, a person whose physical appearance was defined as being different from the traits of the dominant group and resulted in his being set apart for unequal treatment, a person who was considered in the dominant discourse to be “hardworking,” a Muslim person, an older person. In referring to him, Sita’s mother used language that is considered harmful by representatives of historically marginalized communities.
Equity language fails at what it claims to do. This translation doesn’t create more empathy for Sita and her struggles. Just the opposite—it alienates Sita from the reader, placing her at a great distance. A heavy fog of jargon rolls in and hides all that Boo’s short burst of prose makes clear with true understanding, true empathy.
***
Later on, Packer makes this point, which hit home for me because I have taught in prisons: “Prison does not become a less brutal place by calling someone locked up in one a ‘person experiencing the criminal-justice system’.” My incarcerated students would have mercilessly mocked anyone describing them this way.
Packer ends with this:
“Equity language doesn’t fool anyone who lives with real afflictions. It’s meant to spare only the feelings of those who use it.
“The project of the guides is utopian, but they’re a symptom of deep pessimism. They belong to a fractured culture in which symbolic gestures are preferable to concrete actions, argument is no longer desirable, each viewpoint has its own impenetrable dialect, and only the most fluent insiders possess the power to say what is real. What I’ve described is not just a problem of the progressive left. The far right has a different vocabulary, but it, too, relies on authoritarian shibboleths to enforce orthodoxy. It will be a sign of political renewal if Americans can say maddening things to one another in a common language that doesn’t require any guide.”
***
Both the left an the right have sins to answer for in this realm. And Twain is an excellent teacher in how to say things straight and plain. Thank you for bringing him and this lesson to our attention.
Questions about “equity language” need to be discussed, but I would like to hear from the people who are the subject of such language. What if you’re called a nickname you hated? Sometimes it’s not even a deliberately insulting nickname — “Susie,” when you’d rather be called “Susan,” for a banal example. And I have to point out that the example Packer gives is just an exercise. It never appeared in print except in his essay. Boo’s description of Sita stands as she wrote it. Packer is only speculating. It didn’t happen.
Thanks for responding. However, the essay includes a number of real-world examples. You can find it online. I highly recommend it.
One of my friends is Jim Labrecht, who was born with spina bifida, and has spent most of his life in a wheelchair. Despite that, he became the sound director for the Berkeley Repertory Theater–he had to climb on hands and knees every day to get to the sound booth, and did so gladly–he loved his job. He also co-produced a film on the disabled rights movement that featured a summer camp in the Catskills where kids like him, outsiders in their “home” worlds, could come together and be themselves. The name of the film is “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution.”
As Packer said, much of this equity language is not intended for those facing real hardship, but to spare the feelings of its users, and substitutes policing language for real action to help marginalized groups.
“Equity language fails at what it claims to do. This translation doesn’t create more empathy for Sita and her struggles. Just the opposite—it alienates Sita from the reader, placing her at a great distance.”
So well said that Blabbermouth Barry must chime in yet again. Like a strict Freudian, Marxist, race-class-gender approach to literature, conditioning people to think in terms of equity language guarantees that what’s meant will be distorted, and in effect rewritten. It denies the reader the freedom to interpret and understand. It’s yet another well-intentioned blunder.
Elizabeth, “enforced pacification” is a splendidly offensive concept—genius! Reminds me of a current crop of counterfeiters that offer grievance over governing. Twain would be burning out one corncob pipe an hour writing about today’s brave new world.
Thanks for reminding us that Twain is oh so much more than a Disnified Huck Finn! As we see so much of Twain’s wisdom applicable today, this is a timely read. Appreciated!
What a timely article with so many truths, and like others here, I was not aware of the truth of “Remember the Maine.” And I loved, loved, loved this: “If that’s still too abstract, consider two abusive boyfriends amped on steroids fighting each other in order to dominate a fiercely independent single woman (with cats).”
Elizabeth,
Your points on euphemisms and the importance of language resonated with me.
And, if one is to “distinguish between information and propaganda” and “question the hypocrisy of political language,” then one cannot mention U.S. imperialism and Cuba without bringing up Fidel Castro.
In fact, Fidel Castro used such political language and euphemisms to his advantage. Fidel Castro (not the Cuban people) blamed all the ills of Cuba on U.S imperialism. Yet, it was Fidel Castro himself who single-handedly brought down a prosperous country and who executed countless of innocent people in the name of the Revolution and freedom from the yoke of American Imperialism. To add to the irony, when the Cuban people realized that Castro had broken his promises of democracy, they looked to the United States with the hope that they would interfere. But, sadly, the “imperialist” United States did nothing.
My family also came to this country from Cuba. Cuba, where saying anything of this sort about their government will land you in prison at best or with your back up against the wall as you face a firing squad. We’re fortunate, aren’t we, to sit in the good ol’ U.S. of A, contemplating the importance of language and critically examining imperialism?