Ahab's pursuit of Moby Dick is the great American allegory. There is no hissing the villain or cheering the hero in the book. Melville (call him Ishmael, the outsider) presents the white whale as demonic and ferocious on one page and noble on the next. In one chapter on whiteness we are reminded that his absence of color sums up the ambiguity of both the pursuer and pursued. Ahab's ill-fated mission is to uncover the ultimate mystery, blinded as he is by the enormous whiteness.
Add to this our contemporary understanding of the oceanic
ecosystem and we grow indignant as Melville maligns our cuddly behemoth. Of
course, the journey of the Pequod is not to be read literally. The author is
after far greater game.
Were the architects of our misadventure in Southeast Asia testosterone-driven men bent on domination? Yes, of course, many were though some were just simple, self-serving fools. Nor can Ahab be captioned only as a crazed monomaniac…though he was. He was a seeker of truth, as well.
Four presidents were complicit in the tragedy of our knuckle-headed
misadventure in Vietnam. Their acts were committed in the Cold War context premised on the
belief that this Leviathan called Communism would gobble up one country after
another and darkness would descend upon civilized life. Instead, they created their
own doom. They mistook a small country’s determination to shake off colonial
rule, for the Communist dragon. Now, the Hanoi regime is one our favorite trading partners.
Ahab’s mission was revenge for the loss of a limb which
Freud regarded as castration but more importantly to pierce the mask of Moby
Dick, to destroy that which lies behind the face of so-called evil. His zeal
was messianic but the imagined outcome was unattainable just as religious
fanatics, with colossal wrongheadedness, obsess over an imagined godhead in whose name all manner of evil is enacted; crusades, inquisitions and virulent hatred of the other.
Maybe it’s a stretch too far to grant a crazed Dulles, McNamara, Rusk and a bellicose Pentagon similar status as Ahab, of being knights-errant chasing an illusory
dragon. In fact they were all part of an apparatus befitting an American empire.
Aside from the war crimes of napalm, defoliants, stacks of
body bags and a nation torn asunder the tragedy of Vietnam was our excruciating
refusal to come to terms with our role as replacement for European colonialism.
When you think you are menaced by this whale called Communism you see whales
everywhere and end up supporting every corrupt tyrant on the map who declares
himself anti-whale.
It was a dark time in American history lit by some bright songs and burning
draft cards and the emergence of a counter-culture. Yet just as Ishmael
survived the wreckage on a floating coffin we are carried away in our leaking
ship of state, still wounded, still haunted.
Presidents and potentates require whales to stay in power. All they need to do is convince the ill-informed that they are under siege. If there are perceived barbarians at the gate they are a projection of his own barbarism. We have kept the rapists and felons out so that the rapist and felon can rule.
Reagan had his 8-day whale of a war with Grenada as if the tiny Caribbean island were a threat to invade our frozen yogurt stores. Donald has set half the country against itself with the illusion of a diabolical deep state, painting government welfare programs as a monstrous force.
Imagined whales are essential for tyrants and autocrats. I would argue that Bibi, like Ahab, is a vengeful hunter and his whale is Hamas. With a harpooned mind he has created an invisible demonic force impervious to extinction because it is an ideology which has seethed and festered for decades of humiliation, occupation and subjugation.
Melville described his book as wicked as if he was possessed by witchcraft. In fact, his trespass was to dare go face to face with a supreme being.
Ahab, like many among us, abhors the enormous unseen forces in tumultuous times and seeks simplistic answers. He was driven by a passion to confront the unknown and unlock the mystery. His failure defines existential man. Of course, we cannot know what evil lurks nor achieve perfect enlightenment, only strive to embody the divine or glimpse it as in a brief candle.