One of the more odd and intriguing elements of history is when the same kind of events simultaneously occur in many places.  For example, in 1848, the “year of Revolutions,” there was an Irish potato famine that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and and the emigration of a large proportion of Irish people largely to the United States, where their numbers boosted the population and strength of the North vis-a-vis the South, adding their strength to the forces of freedom and egalitarianism in the United States.  Likewise, the year provoked a revolution in France that toppled the Bourbons for good and led to the election of Napoleon III to the leadership of France.  In Germany and Italy nationalistic revolutions scared the monarchies in both countries and led to a harsh repression of nationalists in a dress rehearsal of their 1860’s successes (another time of great struggle and turmoil in the Western world).  Many of the unsuccessful revolutionaries in these countries also went to the United States and other nations, where they participated in the growth of Northern strength and the development of the nation of Argentina, to give two examples.  That is to say nothing of the tensions that nearly destroyed the Austrian Empire and that (in 1867, after a defeat to Prussia) forced Austria to grant co-equal status to its Hungarians to widen the base of their empire and give them the opportunity to begin oppressing minorities, a habit long limited to the Austrian ruling minority.

The same sort of simultaneous experience seems to be happening right now in the Middle East.  South Sudan wins its independence in a vote, and longtime dictators tumble in Tunisia and Egypt.  A dictator in Yemen and monarchies in Jordan and Bahrain feel gravely unstable, while the wealthier monarchies in the Persian Gulf area bribe their citizenry to stay peaceful, all the while the crazy dictator of Libya has mercenaries bomb his own citizens, who have risen up in a very dangerous people’s revolution against his regime.  When so much happens at the same time after years of apparent and superficial calm, one wonders what has happened.  For me, I think it is that the termites of history have been active again.

Perhaps you are familiar with the work of termites.  They are ravenous little creatures who love eating most kinds of wood.  From within they nibble and gnaw at the structure of wood until the structure falls apart from the inside out, leaving the outside looking strong until everything on the inside has collapsed.  If you are only looking at the outside, you think everything is fine until the final moment of collapse.  The same thing appears to happen in regimes–by the time the cracks appear in a tyrannical regime the inside is completely rotted away.  Our eyes deceive us if we only look on the surface, because the surface is the last part to crumble.

Clearly there are a lot of implications about this.  Dictators are human beings too, and no less than other human beings they like to keep up with appearances and put up a show of power and glory and dignity even if the reality is lacking.  Occasionally others, who are in on the secret, may wish for their own reasons to put up with the show.  The Japanese, for example, kept the powerless emperors and even powerless shoguns while serving as the power behind the throne for many centuries because they were content to let others have the glory while they had the power.  Not all cultures have the same tolerance for kabuki theater, however, and demand that those who hold power be recognized by others as the real authorities–like the French Caroliginian Mayors of the Palace overthrowing the powerless Merovingians by papal decree, or the Byzantine co-emperors securing their public esteem by marrying sisters or daughters of the powerless titular monarchs during the Macedonian Dynasty (which lasted from about 750-1025 AD, the golden age of the Byzantine Empire).

Nevertheless, the termites of history are always gnawing.  Empires are unnatural phenomena held together by force and fraud, for the glory of a small elite based on the exploitation of men and resources over a large area.  The unnatural force that it takes to hold empires together saps the power of the people who hold sway over them, and the strain of constantly putting down rebellions, fighting off one’s rival empires for spoils, and keeping charge over one’s power-hungry courtiers and court eunuchs (depending on what type of empire you have) eventually leads to decay.  When the empire crumbles and there is a collapse there are some (perhaps even many people) who long for the “good old days” of empires and seek to support whatever strongman can summon up the force and competence to put all the pieces back together again and start again repeating the same old mistakes over and over again.  Other areas that lack even the will to come together–be they Somalia or Sicily, remain “assabiya black holes” that consume the blood and treasure of the adventurers who seek to pull them into empires and then collapse after a few generations into chaos over and over and over again.  The termites keep gnawing, and no one ever learns a thing.

Why do the termites keep gnawing?  Why do we again and again build up massive monuments to our splendor and rule only to see them crumble by the slow neglect of our infrastructure, the decadence of our civilization, the destruction of our families and moral standards, the slow corruption by bribery and jobbery, the drain of blood and treasure to take over useless scraps of land inhabited by hostile peoples who most often just want to be left alone.  And who can blame them?  Right now the termites have gnawed through the glittering and corrupt regimes of the Middle East and North Africa, and left the rotten piles of sawdust for all to see, and learn from, if they will dare, but the termites have gnawed in plenty of other regions as well.  How long before we wake up ourselves to a living nightmare in a world we can no longer recognize or understand?  For we have plenty of termite food ourselves, and far more concern for the outside appearance than the reality underneath.

Seeing then that we have nothing to brag about, and no reason to gloat, let us therefore seek to understand what cases the termites to feed and how we might at least arrest the process of our decay, if we cannot reverse it altogether.  For we are not immune to the sort of scenes we see on our televisions–the angry mobs in the streets, the killing of innocent and unarmed civilians, the uncompromising demands for jobs and the seething frustrations over the corruption of our leaders who appear to live a life of ease and comfort while many forgotten millions suffer in silence.  For the termites continue their feast while we sleep apathetic and unaware–how long before the structure of our own society is destroyed beyond repair?