I grew up in a small island nation in the Pacific – not one of the tiniest islands, or even one of the tiniest nations – but a small island nation nonetheless. Erewhon is a very long way from anywhere. Though not beyond the shadow of empire.
Things have changed there. The place I that still sometimes feel homesick for has, I suspect, become an imaginary country.
Looking back, it was a place of odd inversions and reflections. At midsummer people decorated fir trees and spray-painted snowflakes on shop windows. On Christmas evening, puddings were set alight, the curtains pulled tight against the bright sunlight to make the pale blue flame visible. The rites of spring were celebrated annually, complete with fluffy bunnies, chocolate eggs and daffodil décor, even as the poplars turned golden and the first frosts made silver grass.
But I digress.
As a child growing up there, I read a steady stream of stories about British POW’s who valiantly tunnelled, roof-climbed, vaulted and impersonated their way out of POW camps, before undertaking the long arduous across Occupied Europe. And when I wasn’t reading The Wooden Horse, or The Colditz Story I was going Underground to Canada with Barbara Smucker, or following Esther Hautzig’s exile to The Endless Steppe. I looked over Anna and Max’s shoulders as they anxiously left Berlin for Switzerland, then France, then Great Britain. I watched David from the shadows as he fled across the frontier. I even kept a watchful eye on the von Trapp family as they clambered their mellifluous way over the Alps.
Reading these tales of derring-do, of desperate flight and exile, I remember being aware at the back of my mind – long before I ever thought of leaving, or even imagined that leaving was possible for me – that Erewhon was a very long way from anywhere. There are no barbed wire frontiers, no watchtowers with searchlights, no Wall, no soldiers with guns: only the flat finality of the surrounding ocean.
For those of a cautious and wary disposition, there’s a word for a place like that. It’s called a trap.
Growing up in that time and place, I played many of the games beloved of not-terribly-feminine girls: chess, Dungeons & Dragons together all its assorted spin-offs and (my personal favourite) rampaging around the neighbourhood hitting each other with sticks while pretending to be super-heroes / medieval adventurers / survivors from a post-nuclear dystopia. There is another game I remember from that time and place too (and a little later even) – it was a speculative game that could be played in solitary contemplation but was more often played in quiet conversation with close friends. It didn’t really have a name, but in imitation of imperialists everywhere, I’ll give it one: America Invades.
As in, “What if America invades?”
We didn’t play it seriously, but having said that, I wouldn’t say we ever played in jest either.
For although Erewhon is a long way from anywhere, we did have television, even though there were just the two channels. And so from watching so-suave, faux-folksy Reagan I had become familiar with the phrase `evil empire,’ even though I had come to rather different conclusions about its proper application. Those of us who played this speculative, conversational and hypothetical game knew that from their grand and lofty eminence, their shining city on a hill, their thousand points of light, Erewhon’s recent obstinence was merely a minor irritation, a fly on the apple-pie. That’s why we never played it seriously. But we also knew that sometimes flies get swatted. That’s why we never played it as a joke.
Playing that game, the flat finality of Erewhon’s surrounding ocean quickly becomes apparent, as do its implications. The terrain defines the shape of the game: this would not be Axis and Allies Redux or Diplomacy Comes Unstuck, but rather an exciting new version of Guerillas in the Mist. We thought of forests in flames as, far above, a plane flew back to base. We recalled the network of tunnels out on the Peninsula, the souvenirs brought back by the silent generation that still lie rusting in sheds and garages.
I’ve been trying to think why this game has been on my mind lately – and even more, the not quite serious but certainly not jesting way that we played it (which, truth be told, was both peculiar and uncharacteristic, for the people I knew in Erewhon tended to speak very much in earnest or very much in jest, but they were not renowned for moderation).
I think it has to do with exceptionalism, which has been on minds besides mine lately, I suspect.
I think there is a tendency – pronounced even – for people of good will who live at the heart of the Empire to see its recent foreign policies as a new and novel departure: unprecedented and unwelcome. And believe me, I am glad that many find these policies unwelcome. But to some of us who live or have lived in the colonies – even the privileged, coddled colonies like Erewhon – these policies do not seem so very new or novel, even though they are unwelcome to us too. Rather they appear like a continuation of long-established, well-worn practices, albeit expanded and intensified. Bigger business as usual, if you like.
Let me be blunt.
I don’t bother talking to Republicans – I see very little point. A cat may look at a king, but that doesn’t mean the king looks back. And in any case, their version of Empire is in deep trouble: the fractures that I perceived growing up in Erewhon, have since become chasms that go all the way down. So I’m more interested in the intentions of those people of good will who live at the Empire’s heart – what are their plans? Will they abandon exceptionalism? Or is it to be business as usual? The worst excesses curbed? A patina of diplomacy overlaid? The fig-leaf of U.N. approval donned? A kinder, gentler Empire.
For if it is to be this last, I must confess that (although Erewhon is a very long way from anywhere and doubtless has become vastly different now from my remembrance) I suspect a certain speculative, conversational and hypothetical game will still be played there.
And if this game, which doesn’t really have a name, is not played entirely seriously, so too, it is not played in jest.
