Beware the Cults of Personality and Dogma

So apparently I need to see the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl.”

The enemy here is not nuclear power. The enemy isn’t even Communism. The enemy is little men who believe they can control the truth, control the facts, and just assume the little people will go on with the deception either because they’re too busy to think otherwise or they simply believe the government is totally legit and has all the answers.

I don’t have HBO, and I’m leery of “free” trials, because they always want your credit card information and I never read the terms and conditions. I don’t trust The Man.

Listen to the raisin’s speech from this clip again:

And how proud [Lenin] would be of you all tonight. Especially you, young man. The passion you have for the people. For is that not the sole purpose of the apparatus of the state? Sometimes, we forget. Sometimes we fall prey to fear. Our faith in Soviet socialism will always be rewarded. Now, the state tells us the situation here is not dangerous. Have faith, comrades. The state tells us it wants to prevent a panic. Listen well. It’s true, when the people see the police they will be afraid. But it is my experience that when the people ask questions that are not in their own best interest, they should simply be told to keep their minds on their labor, and leave matters of the state to the state.

We seal off the city. No one leaves. And cut the phone lines. Contain the spread of misinformation. That is how we keep the people from undermining the fruits of their own labor. Yes, comrades, we will all be rewarded for what we do here tonight. This is our moment to shine.

And though the little flag pin and the commentariat are pointing at POTUS, I can hear this kind of rhetoric – and see the toadying apparatchiks – on both sides of the American political fence. There are those both on the right and on the left who will happily participate in the Brave New World that is party purity and will actively do their parts to keep the people from undermining the fruits of their own labor. Because they, not the people, know what will keep the people happy and safe and ignorant. But most importantly, self-important and smug that they and their side are right, so they become lulled into that sense of stupor that ensures they Won’t. Question. Anything. Because they are right.

Here’s what the writer of Chernobyl says, in part, about the goals of this mini-series:

Well, we are experiencing something now that I used to think was mostly just a phenomenon in a place like the Soviet Union, which is a disconnection from truth. And the emergence of a cult of personality. And a distrust and debasement of experts who don’t go along with whatever the official narrative is. It’s so upsetting, and we don’t know quite how to handle it. What I want people to consider is that no matter what it is we want to believe, and no matter what story it is we want to jam the world into, the truth is the truth. If you organize your life around some political party’s list of things you should believe, or an individual that you think is going to come and save you, you are disconnecting yourself from truth. And there is a price to pay. 

For a million reasons, this was not an anti-nuclear polemic. It’s anti­–Soviet government, and it is anti-lie, and it is pro–human being. But anyone who thinks the point of this is that nuclear power is bad, is just, they’ve just missed it.

Any follower of any political party can fall for this. Cults of personality or cults of dogma exist on any political spectrum. Those too smug to see the own cults of personality or dogma on their end of the stick are the ones we need to watch out for, because they're the ones who'll eagerly help any Brave New World or Big Brother come to power.