The Decadent Worker

From The Dreadlock Recollections (c) 1984:

Gary said many times over again that the best government was that of the philosopher-king. At great length he would go on about the traits a philosopher-king should possess — such as being able to distinguish between coincidence and conspiracy and such as not punishing messengers for bringing bad news.

Surrounding a man with liars until he became so disgusted with lying that he would not tolerate an untruth was one of his ideas for preparing the philosopher-king for the job. On a separate occasion he told me that someday I would be surrounded by liars, and if I could find a way to make them tell me the truth I would become philosopher king.

“Kerry, there are tribal secret societies that surround their king with beautiful women all his life and watch him make love to them — then they sacrifice him.”

That sounded like a dubious honor.

“Kerry, do you think a philosopher-king should have a good enough memory to remember something for thirteen years?”

Of course.

“Rosenberg should not be accused of wanting dictatorship as a principle,” Peter Viereck tells us in Metapolitics: Roots of the Nazi Mind, adding soon afterwards: “He follows the spirit of Wagner’s complicated distinction between King and monarch. Rejecting alike government by parliament or by kaiser (monarch), Rosenberg demands the Volk-king, the hero-dictator risen from the ranks, whom Jahn and Wagner prophesied.

“The qualities and justification of the Volk-king are outlined in the Fuhrer section of the chapter on Wagner’s metaphysics. This Wagnerian concept is basic to nazism. Rosenberg says: ‘We want to see in a German king a person like ourselves… but yet the incarnation of a hero myth.’…

“The gist of the Fuhrer myth is that the Fuhrer is (incarnates) the Volk, instead of ruling it detachedly like monarch or economic class or representing it like a democrat. The Fuhrer is an organic part of the Volk instead of a detached atom. This myth is absolutely basic to Hitler’s rule today. Of course, it is only a myth….”

“Kerry, I think the philosopher-king should be a very gentle person, someone with the soul of a poet, but that he ought to be surrounded for protection by mad dogs — the worst and meanest badasses around!”

Though wondering what type of administration that would produce, I kept my speculations to myself.

“Kerry, you know at the end of the war Hitler came up on the radio and gave a speech calling for the werewolves of Germany to come to the aid of the Nazi cause.”

“Yes, you have mentioned that before,” was my response after the first telling. (pp. 49-51)

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