In my view, one of the remarkable insights that emerged recently regarding the riot on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. 2021, was from former U.S. President George W. Bush.
He was heard saying that he was disturbed watching the hostile forces that went to the Capitol. He was also heard saying that checks and balances work.
I can imagine few other descriptors of the essence of democracy over anarchy than a juxtaposition of the functioning of checks and balances and a riot by hostile forces at the same scene, which, in this case, is the U.S. Capitol.
I don't think that it is unfair to say that to those of us who yearn for democracy, irrespective of geographic origin, this juxtaposition has been an intertwined part of humanity's history over the ages.
We have read and heard historical studies that the debate in ancient Greece about two thousand and five hundred years ago was essentially about reckoning with the power of equality, which led to defining what it means to be human, to use the language of some of these historical studies. The same studies suggest that this reckoning emerged after new knowledge was gained by seafarers from a pre-existing culture elsewhere.
Even though that debate in ancient Greece gave birth to its democracy and Classical Civilization, it must have been outpowered by hostile forces over the ages and forgotten until Renaissance scholars dug it out and brought it back to life after a long struggle.
A reverberating thread in the history of this age-old struggle may be De Rerum Natura (in Latin, which means On the Nature of Things.) About two thousand years ago, a Roman poet and philosopher by the name Titus Lucretius Carus wrote De Rerum Natura to try to explain a Greek philosopher by the name Epicurus. About six hundred years ago, in the incipience of the Renaissance, Poggius Florentinus found a copy of the book, according to the work of Professor Stephen Greenblatt.
Based on my limited reading, the Renaissance movement led to the flourishing of science even though it wasn't a new concept. It suffices to mention here that Archimedes, one of the greatest scientists of all time lived in ancient Greece, more than a century after the birth of its democracy.
Professor Stephen Greenblatt's study of the Renaissance also suggests that Thomas Jefferson, who was arguably part of establishing the checks and balances that George W. Bush talked about recently so passionately, was a student of the Renaissance.
Granted that there is a good grain of truth in these studies and accounting, one could argue that the reverberation for the yearning for democracy from the time before ancient Greece to the recent observation by George W. Bush has a continuity that may last into eternity. What else can last more into eternity than what defines what it means to be human?
The first time I came to know about him was during his campaign and debates with former Vice President Al Gore. I still clearly remember him as a man of few words during one of those debates while Al Gore sounded an ambitious man for power. I still remember Bush's simple answer and Al Gore laboring to answer the same question and then Bush asking in a follow-up: "did I miss something?"
As much as I watched Al Gore as an ambitious man for power, I respected him when he conceded the results of the Presidential election of 2000, choosing that instead of dragging the country through a protracted political battle even though he might have had a reasonable case to make.
Later on, I heard Bush defining himself as a compassionate conservative. Therein lies his Kool-Aid.
The students of Renaissance were able to write that it is self-evident that we are all created equal, and we have inalienable rights. I do not think that these realizations differ from the debate for equality that was realized in ancient Greece and elsewhere before then. I have no idea what might have been happening on the British Island during that time.
The students of Renaissance that wrote the checks and balances in the U.S. that George W. Bush confessed that they work didn't seem to wonder what was happening on the British Island at that time as much as they wondered about ancient Greece and imagined the checks and balances and how it is meant to function. That imagination became resilient enough on January 6. 2021, and evidently overcame the hostile forces of that day.
If one were to forget the Kool-Aid, to this day, it is quite evident that democracy and hostility intertwined are characteristic of U.S. history of just under two and a half centuries. Those who professed about inalienable rights are the same leaders that took part or became a party to conquering a continent, unleashed genocidal destruction against the natives of the continent, willfully abducted natives of yet another continent in order to exploit as they wished the labor of those abductees, tried to establish the idea of borrowed democracy from ancient times that they did not give birth to but studied and endeavored to interpret while still keeping some relics of the British monarchy in it, and attempted to forge a nation-state out of all of it. No doubt that ideas can bring people together and the idea of democracy can only be one of those potent ideas that can bring people together. No nation-state may be without its own flaws. However, the riot of January 6, 2021, made that long-running experiment in the U.S. unravel in front of the world and the five-eyed global monster.
The sad happenstances since the writing of inalienable rights, including the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and so on, as well as being the only state in history to have dropped a nuclear bomb on another state, can not, by any stretch of the imagination, fall short of harboring innate hostility. In apparent self-defense, North Korea may be busy developing the same kind of hostile ammunition. Yet, in a rare glimpse into the thinking processes of the average North Korean society, I remember watching on TV a while back a North Korean man humbly ask a journalist why that country would drop a nuclear bomb on any nation.
One doesn't need to personally feel innate hostility in order to understand that there is no virtue for anyone to harbor it. What compassion or feeling of entitlement to have one to offer is consistent with the mere understanding of the inalienable rights of others? That innate characteristic can have one the capacity to dine from a plate of hospitality while harboring a hostile intent.
The mere understanding of inalienable rights and being hostile to them can make a difference in the trajectory of human progress. The fact that it took centuries between the publication of De Rerum Natura and its discovery in the incipience of the Renaissance may be a testament to that.
Recently, I was watching on CNN Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy documentary. As I kept watching it, I was reminded about the great minds behind the Renaissance that took art to the skies, conceptually, figuratively, and metaphorically. I couldn't help imagining parallels between the search for De Rerum Natura as documented in Professor Stephen Greenblatt's book and Mr. Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy documentary.
The first time that an idea of forgetting one's Kool-Aid and remembering Renaissance came to me was a few weeks ago in reaction to an observation by a clever Republican strategist, Scott Jennings. I heard him say during his appearance on TV that he was looking for an ideas person in Trump's current Republican Party and couldn't find one. My unexpressed reaction was if he can find an ideas person who isn't a progressive. I decided to express a similar kind of reaction using the same title that came to my mind upon hearing Scott Jenning's assessment but only changed the name to George W. Bush in reaction to the latter's interview at a later time.
If one or both of them forget their Kool-Aid and remember the Renaissance, I wonder if they can find any of the great scientists from Archimedes to Galileo to Da Vinci to Newton to Einstein who wouldn't be a Progressive. Progress may just be another definition of their scientific works.
From what I understand, Archimedes did not discover different buoyancies for different seas and oceans; he made the discovery before boats started to travel across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to North America. Galileo did not discover different Earths that rotate around the sun. He observed only one. Da Vinci didn't uncover different symmetries in a Vitruvian Man. He found only one symmetry. Newton's gravity of 9.81 value in SI units is invariable. Einstein's mass to energy conversion formula is the same for all masses.
The yet to be understood and written about scientists of ancient times that paved the way to building massive pyramids more likely than not understood that the block at the top of the pyramid is unlikely to stand timelessly by leaning on the blocks beneath it on any side of the pyramid instead of resting in equilibrium on all blocks below it on all sides of the pyramid. As the pioneer of the scientific definition of force, Newton would probably be one of the best to explain that equilibrium as well as the maintenance it takes to keep the equilibrium of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
It is a shame that the works of so many great progressive scientists fell in the hands of innately hostile forces against democracy who pushed themselves out as the 21st century's caricatures of history. I am not blaming those great scientists here. I only wish that they became alive in the same era, in this era, to put the ills of the hostile forces in the dustbin of humanity's history and become the pioneers of progress. I do not think that George W. Bush who was disturbed, as he put it, by the hostile forces of January 6, 2021, would disagree with this proposition. That is why I say forget your Kool-Aid and remember the Renaissance.