William H. Gass, 1969
“Consider how the titles of tyrants change,” the historian William Frederick Kohler once wrote. “We shall suffer no more Emperors, Kings, Czars, Shahs or Caesars, to lop off our limbs and burn our homes, kiddo, defile our women and bugger our boys; the masses make such appointments now; the masses love tyranny; they demand it; they dance to it; they feel that their hand is forming the First Citizen’s Fist; so we shall murder more modestly in future: beneath the banners of ‘Il Duce,’ ‘Der Führer,’ the General Secretary or the Party Chairman, the C.E.O. of something. I suspect that the first dictator of this country will be called Coach.”
—From “The Tunnel,” a 1995 novel by William H. Gass in which he predicted the likes of the Trump presidency.
Gass died at age 93 in 2017, living just long enough to see his character’s prediction come about in a country in which nearly half of the population believe freedom means following a crazed would-be tyrant down a path of rancor, racism, lies and twisted conspiracies. Gass began the novel in the late ‘60s and finished it a quarter of a century later, getting it published by Knopf. The Times Book Review critic at the time was puzzled by the dire vision of America and wrote: “It will be years before we know what to make of it.”
He was right about that.
Gass was an uncompromising pessimist. “I wrote ‘The Tunnel’ out of the conviction that no race or nation is better than any other, and that no nation or race is worse; that the evil men do every day far outweighs the good.”
In the novel, the deeply depressed historian Kohler, who has just completed a book about Hitler, begins to dig a tunnel to nowhere in his basement. That’s the source of the title.
The Times Book Review dug up the old novel, and gave it a fresh review July 12, 2019. Critic Alec Nevala-Lee noted that “…this evocative symbol [the tunnel] occupies only a fraction of the narrative, which is dominated by Kohler’s seemingly endless flood of rage, interspersed with typographical tricks, cartoons and obscene limericks.
A flood of rage. An interesting phrase considering the following from the first page of Bob Woodward’s new book, RAGE: “I bring rage out. I do bring rage out. I always have. I don’t know if that’s an asset or a liability, but whatever it is, I do.” – Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump , March 31, 2016.
Now with the election days away it’s time for us to crawl out of our own tunnel and enter a new era, and put this one away forever.
What an amazing comment: “the masses love tyranny; they demand it; they dance to it; they feel that their hand is forming the First Citizen’s Fist”…………I have to admit that I also have been falling into a depression (watching our dictator rant last night didn’t help), not just because of him, but more so, realizing that so much of the American public is exactly what this writer describes. There never would have been a hitler if there weren’t the cheering, genocidal masses, there never would have been a putin if there weren’t all the Russians who love him because he is “strong”. And there would not be a trump and the concentration camps we already have on the border full of brown people if there weren’t those genocidal, tyrannical masses in red hats who refuse to believe he is anything other than the “chosen of god” regardless of the extreme evidence to the contrary. That is definately depressing.
So true. But honestly, after trump’s performance last night, what person in their mind could support this dangerous clown?
That’s what we said about 2016. ….. we all overestimated the discretion and intelligence of the American public. I no longer do – I think, sadly, this author is correct. Authoritarian governments arise because there are people who love them. They don’t care what he does. Here’s a article worth reading by Robert Reich: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/27/donald-trump-american-civil-war-joe-biden-republicans-democrats-robert-reich
On the hopeful side, I have a friend who works in Washington for the government, and her opinion is that the military would not support Trump if he tries to provoke some kind of uprising, because they consider him very dangerous to American security.
No depressed person would even begin to dig a tunnel in his basement though I have to admit that it’s a great archetypal image. He would kill himself first.
I agree!