EMPERORS WITHOUT CLOTHES

Hans Christian Andersen is indisputably a genius, on a par with the greatest. His profound tale Emperor’s New Clothes alone would have assured his immortality in the pantheon of the magnificent shadows. There is an eerie resemblance of the story’s Emperor to the recent American President George W. Bush, with his Administration and the United States Congress paralleling the Emperor’s court of stupid and incompetent lackeys, who are afraid that revealing the truth would make them all look stupid and incompetent, and thus make them lose their precious jobs. As for the tale’s two scoundrels, we have the neocon clique so closely impersonated by those two, that the precious fairytale, written well over a hundred years ago, reads as if it has been tailor-made for the New American Century.

But the philosophical message of the Emperor’s New Clothes is certainly larger than just one incidence of time and place. The idea of Emperors without clothes can be put into a variety of larger contexts. One can say anything about anything, and the most stupid things at that, but as long as his words are endowed with the authority of a high office, there will always be hosts of others, rushing to dig up some imaginary pearls of wisdom, from that outhouse of stinking nonsense, and they are sure to always find such pearls there, as long as they are motivated enough to find them.

The ball starts rolling with the vanity of power. The Emperor always has a weakness, and the first task of our scoundrels is to identify it and start playing on it.

…Word of the Emperor’s refined habits spread over his kingdom, and beyond. Two scoundrels, who had heard of the Emperor’s vanity, decided to take advantage of it. They introduced themselves at the gates of the palace with a scheme in mind.

“We are two very good tailors and after many years of research we have invented an extraordinary method to weave a cloth so light and fine that it looks invisible. As a matter of fact, it is invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its beauty.”

It is important to realize that at issue here is not just the gullibility of the Emperor, who will never want to buy anything, even the best of products at the best possible price, unless it is exactly what he wants, and in this case, the quality of the product as such becomes unessential, as long as the presentation is in harmony with his preconceived idea. Now, what about those allegedly sober heads around him? At least one of them must surely see through the scheme, and speak out?

The prime minister was known as a man with common sense. “I cannot see anything,” he thought. “If I see nothing, that means I am stupid! Or even worse, incompetent!” If he admitted that he did not see anything, he would be discharged from his office… “What a marvelous fabric!” he said then.

And so, there is not one among the lackeys to stop him from committing his folly, and our naked Emperor marches on. His folly now becomes public, for everybody to see, but the world of adults allows him to keep getting away with his folly, some, out of personal ignorance and veneration of authority, others, out of fear to be proved unpatriotic, should they confront their Emperor with the truth, still others, and, perhaps, every foreigner among them, out of spite and glee, the latter, in addition, harboring an expectation of a potential profit from the stupid Emperor’s folly.

…A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage. “The Emperor is naked,” he said.

“Fool!” his father reprimanded, running after him. “Don’t talk nonsense!” He grabbed the child and took him away.
But the boy’s remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again, until everyone cried: “The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It is true!”
The Emperor realized that the people were right, but he could not admit to that. He thought it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who could not see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.

Alas, such is the case with all those emperors without clothes. “A man in my position cannot allow himself to look ridiculous,” as Jack Woltz says, in The Godfather. And, incredibly, they are all convinced that, far from looking ridiculous already, the only thing which could expose their ridiculousness would be their own admission of their folly. And so, they will march on, and on, until stopped by circumstances beyond their control.

…So far, we have been talking mostly about the Emperor, his court, and the public. It is time now, in our next entry, to talk about the scoundrels… among other things.