On Partisanship

General Discussion
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There has been some revived interest in Aldous Huxley’s 1952 book “The Devils of Loudun”, about some unpleasant events which took place in the small French town of Loudun in the 1600s. Huxley’s observations on partisanship are worth considering, relevant to today … just as they were to the French of the 1600s.

“Partisan loyalty is socially disastrous; but for the individuals it can be richly rewarding — more rewarding, in many ways, than even concupiscence or avarice. Whoremongers and money-grubbers find it very hard to feel proud of their activities. But partisanship is a complex passion with permits those who indulge in it to make the best of both worlds. Because they do these things for the sake of a group which is, by definition, good and even sacred, they can admire themselves and loathe their neighbors, they can seek power and money, can enjoy the pleasures of aggression and cruelty, not merely without feeling guilty, but with a glow of conscious virtue. Loyalty to the group transforms these pleasant vices into acts of heroism.”

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And here’s the break. This may be true for some Democrats, but it certainly isn’t true for the rank and file Republicans that I know.

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what is your definition of ‘rank and file’? Serious question…

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Low to medium attention voters who run mostly on inertia, with extra attention only paid in the run-up to elections.

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From the context of Huxley’s writing, it seems that his negative observations on partisanship were not directed at those low attention voters who reliably vote the same way as their parents did. Rather, he was concerned with the much smaller group who devote themselves to a single issue – think the Global Warm-mongers or BLM – and imagine they are the vanguard who have recognized the most important truth in the world … a truth which has apparently escaped the attention of us hoi-polloi.

Unfortunately, those kinds of dedicated True Believers devote themselves to political action, and have an influence far in excess of their numbers.

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Not because of the persuasive power of their positions. ONLY because of the endless amplification by their media fellow travelers. Where are the investigative journalists exposing this obvious fact when we need them? This corrupt and corrosive leverage would end quickly were it repeated a few dozen times.

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It has been argued that what these single-issue extremists bring to the party is dedication. Most of us are reluctant to attend a school board meeting or a candidate forum - we have lives! For the dedicated partisan, those kinds of fora are their lives. To give them their due, they are prepared to devote much of their time & energy to political activities.

And thus in a “democratic” system where candidates are selected by the small proportion of citizens who vote in primary elections, those partisans are seriously over-represented in political offices. We end up with the anomalous situation that elected “Representatives” are clearly not representative of the majority in their communities.

There are other flavors of democracy where that would not be the case.

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Sounds like most voters I know…

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Well, yes. That’s precisely why “rank and file” fits. :man_shrugging:

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What a coincidence,i just read that book, at last—it’s been on my Kindle for ages. They call it a historical novel but it’s really more a work of philosophy, in my opinion. Very funny! I’m looking forward to the re-release of the movie this month. And yes I was struck by Huxley’s clear headed scorn —of people he doesnt agree with.

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Are we reading the same book??? I just finished the section describing in painfully horrible detail the judicial torture and burning-at-the-stake of the priest – officially because he was a magician in league with the Devil; unofficially because he had been a bit of a lad who had offended some powerful people, like Cardinal Richlieu. Not many laughs there!

It is nevertheless a very interesting book – indeed philosophical as well as theological and medical and historical.

Fascinating observations on life in those days that I had never heard. I was particularly taken with Huxleys’ comment that many of the young women who ended up as nuns were there because their upper class families could not afford a sufficiently large dowery to attract the attention of an appropriate suitor, leaving the girls with no prospects of marriage. Small wonder that healthy young women who were in the convent because of economic factors rather than the love of God were susceptible to sexual fantasies about the handsome priest.

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No, no, of course Grandier’s fate isn’t funny! But the earlier descriptions of him and his dalliances are, as are Huxley’s satirical comments about the prioress and various churchmen.

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Yesterday I attended a demon-possession double header: the cinematic broadcast of Verdi’s Macbeth, and the “director’s cut”of Ken Russell’s 1971 movie The Devils , based on Huxley’s book about the Loudon possessions, currently being shown in a very limited re-release. ( “Limited” both in duration and geography: The Devils is only running for a week, and it ain’t playing in Peoria; we had to travel 1.5 hrs to the nearest showing.)
I hope you @Gavin , can catch it! It only deals with the story of Grandier, illustrating the commentary such as you quoted.

( Just an observation about the Macbeth story, which Verdi followed very closely: it’s always seemed to me that the key to the whole thing is: blood. Duncan’s blood. Before they touch it, Macbeth is rather irresolute about committing murder, whereas his wife is all Lindsay Clancy, rhapsodizing about how she would bash her suckling babe’s brains out rather than exhibit such lack of resolve! But after they bathe their hands in the blood, he becomes totally blood-thirsty, whereas she is abjectly UNmanned. Chalk one up for the demons on the heath! Spectacular production, BTW!)

The Devils was controversial and “shocking” in 1971, so I think I expected too much. I did love it, kinda, although

Wait: SPOILER ALERT! , in case anybody reading this hasn’t read Huxley’s book——

…It was awful seeing Oliver Reed’s virile beauty destroyed. The scenes of his torture and death are quite explicit; I couldn’t look. This part is word-for-word with Huxley.

The nude orgy scenes seemed to me kinda,brief and not too explicit , really. And nudity was no big deal in 1971. I concluded that what was so shocking back then was the sacrilege, the defiling of the sacred. We take that for granted now, after Dan Brown’s ill-written but absorbing screeds, after the pedo-priest scandals and a host of movies and books peeking under the cassock. Ho hum.
It’s not like we didn’t already know about all this, long before 1971, if we chose to take notice of our canon from Chaucer through Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry. It could only have been considered “transgressive” by Americans leading the unexamined life. But I reckon there have always been plenty o’ those, Lord love ‘em!-especially as we teetered on the brink of the mainstreaming of the Sexual Revolution.
The movie does illustrate the old, old story about using a public figure’s sexual peccadillos to discredit whatever large cause he is championing. God knows they tried with Trump! In Grandier’s case it was regional and municipal autonomy in the face of Richelieu’s determined church-state fascism. Maybe THAT was more shocking back in 1971 than it is now.
IF @Gavin or any of you dear polymaths catch The Devils, I’d be interested to hear your take!

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Thanks, Hypatia, for the review. I will look out for the movie, but it may not reach my area, being far off the metropolitan axis.

Nudity? Ho-hum! We have all been so over-exposed to the naked female body that the thrill has now definitely gone. Or maybe that is my age talking. As an old man once said – I like to see pretty young women … I just can’t remember why.

But torture – genuine bone-breaking, permanently disfiguring torture? In this wishy-washy world where water-boarding (inducing the fear, but not the reality, of drowning) is considered by the Best People to be beyond the pale. I can understand your inability to watch – it was distressing enough to read about in Huxley’s book.

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It seems I am less far off the metropolitan axis than I had supposed. Russel’s “The Devils” did indeed reach a cinema no more than an hour-and-a-half from my home.

It was a relatively small auditorium, but it was almost sold out … on a Wednesday evening. It seems “The Devils” has sparked a level of interest. The audience appeared to be rather normal – the usual collection of overweight young women and couples of varying ages. No obvious “date night” couples, nor groups of younger males seeking the thrill of gore and nudity.

As for the gore and nudity – my impression was it was somewhat restrained compared to today’s movies. The acting, of course, was incomparably better than in the typical modern movie. Without taking anything away from the performance of Oliver Reed as Grandier, I was really convinced by Michael Gothard’s portrayal of Father Barre as the too-easily corrupted exorcist.

Imagery, too, was stunning. I am still struck by the closing scene of Grandier’s wife scrambling over the demolished walls of Loudun and walking off into a desolate landscape populated only by the tortured bodies of Protestants broken on the wheel.

Personally, I found Huxley’s clinical description of the torture of Grandier in the book to be much more unsettling than the visuals in the movie. No-one in the cinema threw up or left during those scenes.

Clearly, the movie focused primarily on the political aspect of Grandier’s fall from grace, and Huxley’s ponderings on religion were mostly omitted.

What most has stuck with me from Ken Russel’s movie is how much our world has changed since 1971. With many movies today, the closing credits list the Chinese financiers, the Polish production team, the huge group of Indians who worked on CGI, the orchestra which recorded the music in Australia. In 1971, this movie was made at PInewood Studios in England, all the names listed on the production side were English names, the music was performed by a London group – and the many crowd scenes involved real English actors & extras, not CGI. One might discuss whether the Olde English approach or the globalized approach is better … but they are certainly different!

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I’m so glad you could find it.

Father Barré was a laffriot! As was Louis XIII (although I dont think his scenes were in the book) . Didja catch where he asks Barré why he doesn’t speak to the demons in Latin ( this IS in the book) and the priest explains that some demons don’t travel much.:joy::joy::joy::joy:

I wondered about the interiors. I doubt ANYTHING in 17th century France was that clean and white! I read somewhere that this was an homage to Huxley’s comment that what was done to Jeanne des Anges was like “a rape in a public lavatory”.

But no: rape, torture, sacrilege, governmental corruption and persecution: 55 years on , NONE of that is shocking any more. Nor even titillating.

What I missed most from the book was the demonology: in Huxley’s sources the churchmen went to great pains to identify individual demons by name, and locate which part of. The nun’s body each was possessing.

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