22A044 Collectivism by Jim Davies, 11/1/2022

Eighty three years ago my father began to write a diary. In a couple of good-quality notebooks he hand-wrote an entry every few days for six years, the duration of the war that began, for his country of England, on 9/3/39. Because I'm the only person extant who's somewhat familiar with his highly cursive style of writing, I've been drafted to turn it into an e-book. It will probably be ready to pass down to future generations of the Davies Dynasty by the year-end; and of course to any others willing to part with a modest fortune in exchange.

Dad was well connected. After school he worked as a junior in the branch office of a big insurance firm, and worked his way up with flair and enthusiasm. He knew colleagues, customers, neighbors, friends, fellow members of tennis and badminton clubs, and of course family; he read newspapers and heeded the BBC, the "wireless" medium that handed down to the people what government wished them to hear. So he was well equipped to tell the tale as a typical, thoughtful member of the English middle class.

Sure enough, the diary begins with the resounding phrase "We have been at war since 11 am today." Notice that first word: "We." Along with its relations like "us" and "our" and "everyone" it occurs several thousand times in the whole diary. Dad did use the first person singular as well, but mostly he favored the plural. He wrote as for the collective, and I don't doubt that he represented its view with good accuracy.

WW2 was declared without protest from that collective, by its government. After due deliberation, Prime Minister Chamberlain said that his opposite number in Berlin had failed to respond to an ultimatum, and so the two nations were at war. But such was the reigning collectivism that nobody contested the use of the word "we"; nobody dissented (or nobody known to or heard of by my father) or disagreed. The PM spoke on behalf of everyone. "We" were all in this together, to use the slogan wickedly applied to the 2020 Bogus Plague.

The way that this collective mindset had been brought about there differed from that used in Germany, and differed a lot from that used a couple of years later here in America; but the result was the same. This is our nation, we will fight for it. Our Leader leads, we will follow. The blood-soaked work of the "Mass Formation Psychosis" had begun; and rather surprisingly, it worked also in the USSR, where for 20 years the population had been cruelly bullied by the ruling Bolsheviks. As soon as Russia was attacked, everyone rallied to Stalin's leadership and fought and died as Russians, for what he unashamedly called "Mother Russia." To this day, WW2 is known there as the "Great Patriotic War" and not as the Great War for the Glorious Proletariat, or some such bunkum.

Several times in the course of the diary, Dad strongly criticizes government failure to prepare to fight the war it began; for it first two or three years the UK was seriously outclassed by superior equipment and military skills in the German forces. During the period of heaviest bombing known as "The Blitz" in the fourth quarter of 1940, there was virtually no defense; Heinkels and Junkers bombers flew at will over the whole of Britain with nary a searchlight, Spitfire or AA gun outside London, and very few even there. Losses of vital cargo ships on their way with food and weapons to Liverpool and London were appalling; U-boats were picking them off like sitting ducks.

But never once does he or anyone else question its wisdom in going to war. Nobody was happy when Chamberlain declared it, but everyone agreed it was "necessary." The collective failed to question authority, to think for itself. The question of what the war was for was not only unanswered, it wasn't even asked.

Because of this mindless collectivism, this unwarranted respect for Authority, normal life in the UK was up-ended - suffering was severe; France was over-run in six weeks, German plans to invade the USSR were postponed for over a year (which allowed Stalin time to get ready to repel it), FDR had a European war in progress which he might join so as to replace the British Empire with an American one, and the Pacific war was created by him to act as a "back door" to enable him to reach it. Over sixty million human beings were killed so as to turn the USA (or rather, the US government) into a superpower; that was the net result of WW2 and it happened because everyone was collectivist.

"We" is the most lethal pronoun in the English language.