On heroes, cults of personality, turning on one's hero, and... stuff: Reconsidering the Dune series

 Let's have ourselves a little (one-way) chat (read: me shouting into the void at a non-existent "you," not because I'm a solipsist, but because nobody reads this blog) about heroes, cults and all that.  I have no intention of mentioning... him.  At least, as I begin to type.  He has a way of insinuating himself, but as of now, despite the fact that the phrase, "cult of personality" is in the title of the post, and I'm a political scientist who writes these long-winded bloviations about the relationship between science fiction novels and modern politics, I do not intend to address... him.  Begone, douchebag.  (Does that work?  Wouldn't it be awesome if it did?)

No, I have other people on my mind.  After all, the messianic impulse, by which I mean, the desire to anoint someone as "the one"-- that wretched cliche of he who will bring peace and order and balance and sugar and "spice" and everything nice-- that impulse is a common one, shared not just by those who have gone down the QAnon rabbit hole, but by left, right and center.  The old line used to be that "the left falls in love, and the right falls in line."  It is a dated claim about the ideological tendency of the left to elevate someone as the messiah of the hour (e.g. Ocasio-Cortez, and before her, Sanders, and before him, lots of people you have probably forgotten, like Howard Dean), and the right to settle for some milquetoast cardboard cutout, like Mitt Romney, or literally anyone named "Bush."

Of course, before the Republican Party had its mass religious conversion, they were on a quest to rename as many things as possible after Ronald Reagan, so don't give me this shit about how the GOP wasn't about hero-worship.  Then there are the self-styled "centrists" who are always looking for a "maverick" of some kind to elevate, as the one who rises above party, or some such shit.  See what I did with that word there?  Yeah, it was bullshit with him, and it's basically always bullshit.  My point, though, is that the impulse to find someone to elevate is a common one.

And just yesterday, I wrote my own rah-rah-Liz-Cheney post.  So just to make things clear, let me knock her down.  She is dead wrong on one of the most vital issues of our time:  climate change.  While I started that post with a semi-facetious "Liz Cheney For President" line, I'd actually have some real problems with her as POTUS.  Not quite as many as with Ocasio-Cortez, and different ones, but real problems.

What does that mean?  It means that I can observe her strengths of character without being blinded to her faults.  And my observation of her faults does not blind me to her strengths of character.  Consequently, whether or not I would vote for her would depend on her opponent.  It's just that I can't fucking stand Ocasio-Cortez, and I think she would be an unmitigated disaster as president.  So, yeah, in that particular hypothetical, I'd vote Liz.

What it means to take a clear-eyed view is to note an individual's strengths and not be blinded by that observation to a person's faults, and similarly, to observe a person's faults, without being blinded to that person's strengths.  Liz Cheney has courage and integrity.  She is also cruel, cold, and blinkered on science.

With clear eyes.

Of course, any eyes that started reading this post looking for commentary on Dune probably wandered away by now, but oh, fuck it.  Freedom's just another word for no audience to lose, right?  I think a Pomona College alum wrote something to that effect.  Anyway, they're remaking Dune.  Again.  'Cuz.  Because nobody has any original fucking ideas, and everything has to be adapted and remade, and godemperorfuckingdamnit, seriously, people?

If they start adapting Octavia Butler, we should call for a... jihad.  A... Butlerian Jihad.*

Fuck, they're doing that?  Seriously?  I try to make a joke, and...

Never mind.

Anyway, another decade, another Dune adaptation.  Read the first four books (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, and God Emperor of Dune).  The final two-- Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune are OK, but skippable.  Disregard everything touched by Brian Herbert-- Frank's son.

If you don't actually know anything about the series, I don't even know how to begin summarizing everything for you.  It covers thousands of years, and dramatic changes over the course of "history" in an elaborately constructed, complex future.  It starts, at least, with a breeding project by the Bene Gesserit to produce the "Kwisatz Haderach."  The Bene Gesserit are a faction of women who take a freaky drug, and get magic powers from it.  So... witches.  And they are trying to breed a messiah-figure.  Oopsies, it doesn't happen quite as planned, but it sort of happens when Lady Jessica, one of their ranks, has a son with her consort, Duke Leto Atreides, and yes he is descended from that Greek line.  Homeric hijinks ensue.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet your messiah, Paul Atreides!

Except... he's... not much of a savior.  He's actually pretty much a mass murderer.  On a scale that you can't comprehend.  So here's what happens in the first book.  The Atreides family moves to Arrakis, where sandworms produce a drug called the "spice melange," which extends your life, and does some other freaky shit, like make you prescient, if it doesn't kill you.  War ensues, most of the Atreides are wiped out, and Paul goes into hiding with the Bedouin Fremen, out in the desert to become their white savior, Lawrence of Arabia-style.  (It's an older book.  Wha'dya'want?)  He names himself after a mouse, so that he can roar at the Emperor, whom he topples, along with everybody else, and he kills a fuckload of people, but since that happens basically off-page, casual audiences miss that.  Yeah, the Emperor is a shitbag, but Paul goes on a bloodthirsty fucking rampage.  OK, done.  Book 1, executive summary.  Lawrence of Arabia with drugs, but way cooler.

So Paul is Emperor, with people alternately worshipping him, and turning on him because... well, either it's because they weren't on his side during his Jihad, or because if you're the fucking messiah, everything better be perfect, right?

Amazingly enough, shit ain't perfect, and by the second book, Paul's own people are turning on him, along with his surviving adversaries.  Messiah?  Messiahs save shit.  Paul makes such a mess of things that he has to go out the Fremen way, walking into the desert, ostensibly to die, except that he's Paul, so that ain't-a-gonna work.  He's just leaving his creepy-ass sister, Alia, in charge until his kids come of age.  Alia is so fucked in the head that she is letting the ghost-memories of dead ancestors tell her what to do.  The worst of the ghost memories.  Gee... why isn't this working?  Why are things going so badly?  Aren't messiahs supposed to, you know, save shit?

And it's only gonna get worse.  You see, towards the end of Paul's life, he got blinded in a terrorist attack, and refused to have new eyes installed.  So, he just used his prescience to "see," creepy, empty eye sockets and all.  'Cuz he wasn't creepy enough before that, I guess.  The more dependent he is on his prescience, the more locked the entire universe is into his prescient visions, and.. um... free will, anyone?  Everything was already stagnant, and Paul is fucking over the universe.

Your messiah, the Kwisatz Haderach, fucks things up so badly that what comes next?  His son.

It's bad when Alia is running the universe, because Alia is nuts, and amid all of the Alia craziness, Paul's son, Leto, gets chased into the desert to die.  Long story.  We're in Book 3 now.  Leto is supposed to die, but Leto survives.  How?  He jury-rigs a makeshift "stillsuit."  Stillsuits are the getups you need to survive in the desert, by preserving your body's hydration.  How does he do it?  Um... in the creepiest, and most consequential way possible.

Those big sandworms that are all over Arrakis?  They form from little, tiny things called "sand trout."  Leto II starts putting those things all over his body to form a barrier between his skin and the desert air.  They transform him into a kind of giant, fucking sandworm thing, slowly, over the course of thousands of years, during which time the creepy, uber-powerful whateverthefuck he is rules the universe as the "God Emperor," and yeah, he's functionally a god.  And not a conventionally benevolent one, but...

Let's deal with Leto II.  By this point, we're in God Emperor of Dune.  Leto isn't in it for power or anything like that.  He's trying to save humanity.  Kind of.  He's trying to clean up Paul's mess.  Humanity was set on a path, from which it must break.  And Leto is trying to put humanity on what he says is a better path.  The Golden Path.  And we... sorta... have to... trust him?

Within the universe, Leto is a brutal tyrant.  Hated and feared, but trusted?  Not exactly.  We the readers, though, don't have a specific reason to treat him as an unreliable narrator with respect to his motives, and not having to live under his rule, we can take a perspective on Paul through Leto.  Even after Leto II's fall, we can think through what he does, and why he does it.

Paul is no messiah, by any conventional meaning of the term.  And Leto II, while villainous by any conventional understanding, must be analyzed through the lens of history, and through our understanding of Paul and what Paul did.  Paul Atreides is one of our better literary examples of a lionized figure so clearly misunderstood within universe.  It takes until the consequences of his actions unfold before people go from worshipping him to turning on him, yet the observation is that they never should have worshipped him in the first place.  Legends of a savior were actually placed among the Fremen strategically by the Bene Gesserit, to be exploited later, which is exactly what Paul and Jessica do.  What we observe is the exploitation of that messianic impulse-- the drive to elevate someone to the status of messiah, and what's more, we see the collapse when the messianic figure is revealed to be not just flawed, but worse than flawed.  We see the aftermath, and the horrors of what happens when someone has to clean up the mess.

The idea of Leto II being the one cleaning up the mess is perhaps not the obvious interpretation of the Dune series, given his brutality, but that was, to some degree how Leto saw himself, and he certainly saw himself as serving a long-term purpose for humanity that could not be seen without the long view, prescience, and all of that.  To see Leto's flaws, then, should not blind the reader to what he was trying to do, which is not to justify, in moral terms, what he did, and all of the atrocities he commits.  Who is worse-- Paul or Leto II?  That's a hard question.  Neither are Hitler, Stalin, Mao... Paul overthrows a corrupt Emperor, and yadda-yadda-yadda, but he kills fucktons of people, and can't manage the Empire.  Leto II?  Holy shit, what he does...  But he is also trying to put humanity on what he sees, with prescience, as a better path, the "Golden Path," without stagnation.  Creepy?  Yeah, but also a very different kind of character, and a different moral perspective.

Where'm'I goin' with this?  The simple observation that anyone you elevate as a hero, or object of cult worship will necessarily fall.  No book nor series examined this process more effectively than Dune, and the movie will probably suck, and stop remaking and adapting things, and I'm just ramblin' about this because I'm on about heroes and cults of personality, and this is a total run-on sentence, and kids, don't write like this when you submit papers, or I'll fuckin' flunk you!  See, that's called "lampshading."

Ain't no fuckin' messiah, and whomever you choose to see, eyes glazed over in adoring worship, ranges somewhere between merely human with a few admirable characteristics, and Paul Atreides, revealed ultimately as so far from a savior that the only way forward for humanity, past stagnation, was Leto II's Golden Path, should we trust that creepy sum'bitch.

Leto II?  Some villains, even the worst, have viewpoints that you don't understand.  Not all.  Some are just irredeemable shitbags, but it is worth asking, and pondering, because some such individuals do have characteristics that are worth, dare I say, admiring.  And a clear-eyed view requires separating analysis of one trait from another.

Ain't no fuckin' heroes, ain't no fuckin' messiahs.  Just a lot of fucked up people.  Some with a few admirable traits.  That desire to elevate someone to the status of messiah?  To create a cult of personality around someone?  It goes nowhere good.  Never has, never will.

Oh, and some music, I guess.  Yeah, Living Colour kicks ass, but I've used them.  So here's the thing.  Most of that goth-rock shit from the 80s and early 90s sucked.  Concrete Blonde was good.  Yeah, they were good.  Johnette Napolitano has a great voice, and James Mankey was a creative and subtle guitarist.  "I Don't Need A Hero," from Bloodletting.

*Fine, I'll annotate this one.  In the Dune universe, AIs are outlawed because they got too powerful, which led to a war called "the Butlerian Jihad."