One bored day while on Amazon Prime, I perused the selection, looking for something — anything — new. I happened upon “A History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts,” a 48-episode lecture series by Professor Robert Bucholz of Loyola University of Chicago. Dear Lord in all of Heaven! Where have you been all my life? Initially recorded in 2003, how on earth have I missed this master course in early modern English history? How has this Professor Bucholz been unknown to me? Watching his series made me wonder why I never became the history teacher I wanted to become while taking all those history classes in high school. Alas! The road not taken, indeed! (If you watch this course and don’t like it, then you’re an intellectual heathen. No two ways about it! You’re just a straight-up mindless Neanderthal!)
I binge-watched all 24 hours in about two weeks. What a refresher of everything I’m sure that I learned once upon a time in high school in two Modern European History classes — one regular and one AP. I must admit I was somewhat embarrassed that I had forgotten so much. However, one concept that Professor Bucholz discussed was the Great Chain of Being. That topic is definitely something I did not learn in any high school course. But it reminded me of our current history-making in good ‘ole America. Traitor trump, RepubliKKKlans, MAGA morons, and QAnon kooks are gaining power and popularity, all in an attempt to rebuild and maintain the Great Chain of Being. Indeed, it is the immutable hierarchal pyramid that Medieval kings and the Church relied upon to keep societal order and everyone in their place. Fast forward several hundred years, and nothing has changed! In American style, the Great Chain of Being takes on less Biblical significance — although I may argue not diminished by much (i.e., Mike Johnson’s ascension) — but a potent hierarchal desire all the same. Our Great Change of Being goes something like this: Instead of a king at the top, Americans yearn for traitor trump as “president” (read: dictator) with divine rights. Below him are white male Christian RepubliKKKlans — WASPs — who are the ruling elites. Below them is everyone else, who themselves can be tiered by their ethnicity (Black, Hispanic, other), gender (i.e., women), sexuality (e.g., the gays), wealth (i.e., the bottom 98 percent), non-Christians, and so on, all of whom must battle for a marginally higher rank in the lowest positions of society. Suddenly, the Great Chain of Being metaphor made perfect sense.
Of course, Professor Bucholz’s lecture series also reminded me — without much surprise or astonishment — that there has always been a struggle between those who rule and the ruled, and, indeed, among the ruling class and the class kings rule over. Social tranquility is the exception, rarely the norm. This is particularly true during the English Civil Wars, when, for the first time, the English people killed their king! Talk about upsetting the Great Chain of Being! After roughly ten years of England being governed by a republic, the country revived its monarchy. Indeed! How strange that after all the bloodshed of two civil wars and a clamor to end the corruption of a king, the people invited the restoration of a king. Why? Life seemed to be worse for people under a republic led by the English Parliament. (I won’t get into the whole religious aspect of this period, which played a significant and decisive part in the tumult of the Tudor and Stewart dynasties.) But what struck me most about England’s restoration of the monarchy is the country’s reversion to the mean, so to speak. Then, it dawned on me that societies and governments generally return to what they know best, and in the example of England, that would appear to be a monarchy. So, how does this relate to current America? Hmm. Good question. This, I will opine upon in another post.