War & Peace II
Of all the innumerable alternate universes out there, I remain confident that ours is the only one where Donald Trump became President in 2016. So many years later, I still feel the same sense of horror that Marty McFly probably felt when he traveled back to 1985 to discover that Biff Tannen had taken over Hill Valley. Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
I’m told Leo Tolstoy was feeling the need to understand how his country had gotten where it was when he began his serial “The Year 1805,” on the French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic Era, written between 1865–1867 and later compiled into the book “War & Peace” in 1869. It would be another 60 or so years before the Russian Revolution, but this was a time of unrest that certainly laid the ground works for the revolution. Czar Alexander II had emancipated the serfs in 1861. Workers were beginning to organize throughout Europe. There was clearly a massive societal shift that had pulled the rug from under the status quo in terms of class struggles. Over several years Tolstoy published a work that wasn’t quite a novel, not quite a history, not quite a philosophy, but all of those things and none of those things…it reads as someone who is trying to unpack some complicated feelings.
As I’ve been reading War & Peace — a very close read that will likely take me years to complete — I’ve really been enjoying digging into the history of the Napoleonic era and the cultural references made through out the book. However, I can not help myself but to draw comparisons between turn of the century Russia and turn of the century United States. This may also reflect my desire to understand my own history, growing up in the 90s and coming of age through the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. Even living through this period in history, it struck me as grotesque that we could continue to live our lives as Americans with little knowledge of what our soldiers were experiencing abroad, let alone the experiences of the peoples we were occupying. For the sake of “Freedom”. I’ve always wanted to come back to the lead up to the Iraq war, with some maturity and hindsight.
I also feel that its rather calming to look at culture through the lens of history. I’m writing this during a moment in history when US citizens have been inspired by a US Supreme Court justice to fly US flags up-side-down, in solidarity with a movement that aims to overthrow the US government. I’m looking towards history to determine just how dire of circumstances we’re in and I’m working through a 1000+ page book full of characters and references to slow that process down. Fingers crossed that the Revolution doesn’t come within my lifetime.
And a Karl Marx quote (because everyone saw that coming):
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”