The Politics of Gloating….

There seems to be a lot of gloating going on these days, from Alex Beam’s jolly article in the Boston Globe detailing the perils of emigrating to Canada to Jeff Jacoby’s prim announcement that Phat Tuesday was a victory over something called “Bush hatred”. We have also seen strange headlines on the Yahoo.com news summary celebrating the efficacy of electroshock for the treatment of “depression”. In all, today’s winners make their victory sweeter by flinging outrages upon the defeated.
Losers whine, winners gloat. Both seek to derive some type of emotional gratification from their respective condition. Laughing at one’s victims or those one has beaten in a legitimate contest has a long storied history. The late Lakota Sioux made gloating into a musical art form and happily practiced it over the corpses of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry.
There is something insecure about serious gloating though. Like the victors need to continually convince themselves of something. To my mind it is a signifier of inner timidity or anxiety.
It is significant to recall that Britons openly gloated over Germany’s defeat in 1918. Anyone else out there remember Lloyd George’s hysterical promise to “hang the Kaiser”? A scant fifteen years later though, after a far more difficult and costly victory over Germany, there was precious little gloating to be found in the Churchill’s England. Having mortgaged the empire and the wealth of the nation to hold onto their liberties, there was little else to feel in England except relief and a good portion of foreboding.
Gloating then seems to be a profoundly ahistorical passion. Hard case gloaters live in the moment, they have no sense that their current situation can change for the worst. As for the contemporary situation, the GOP’s tends to overcelebrate its own victories…thinking a few parting cracks over the heads of the dems will keep smooth their own path to glory. It is a fool’s indulgence the passion of the soone to be humbled…for indeed history has made jesters and tattered ones at that of us all.

History does not repeat itself, if it did, then God help us all.