We Have Never Been Democrats

1.

There are an estimated 118 emperors, kings, chieftains, suzerains, amirs, shahs, satraps, and even three known presidents of democratic republics, currently trapped deep inside of mountains. These are not tombs, exactly, even if the mounds and pyramids that have been built up to keep the mortal remains of rulers from Egypt to Mexico to Illinois plainly imitate, if only by approximation, the natural majesty of mountains. For the kings in the mountains are very much alive, and can be seen to breath once every century or so. When the exhalatory phase of their respiration begins, a servant-boy holds up a looking-glass beneath his nose, and at the first sign of vapor accumulating on the surface, he runs out of the chamber, up through a natural vein of the earth, and out to the open air, to see whether the ravens are still circling in the sky above. When they finally fly away, the boy will descend again, and awaken the king, and the two will emerge to the surface together, and the king will reclaim the throne, and return his realm to its foredestined greatness.

The best known of these sleeping rulers is the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Rotbart, more commonly known as Barbarossa. He has been asleep deep inside the Kyffhäuser hills of Thuringia ever since his supposed death in 1190 AD, though Hitler imagined he had succeeded in summoning that great sovereign back to life with the invasion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941, a military campaign the Führer dared to name “Operation Barbarossa”. “Kyffhäuser” is thus used as a generic name to describe the phenomenon in question, even when the sleeping sovereign sits within an altogether different mountain, such as Untersberg (Charlemagne) or Mount Blaník (King Wenceslas).

Sometimes it happens that rulers end up ensconced in mountain-like stony objects, perhaps for lack of any significant topography at the time and place where their long hibernation begins, such as Constantine XI Palaiologos, who is believed to be trapped in the walls of Constantinople. Several former rulers, particularly in the Celtic lands, are currently biding their time within oak trees. King Sebastian of Portugal is hiding in a thick fog. On occasion it is the mountains themselves, or other significant outcroppings, that are said to be the true rulers of the realm, such as the Lena Pillars on the banks of that great Siberian river, or the Ute Peak of southwestern Colorado, which the people who share its name hold to be a warrior-god. And although he is still alive, technically, Michael Dukakis’s soul is widely believed to be trapped in the HVAC system of a Dunkin’ Donuts in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Like Cincinnatus before him, Old Joe has decided to put down the reins of power and to return to ploughing the fields, or at least to combing the beaches of Rehoboth. Both of the two major parties are now ebullient, for their own distinct reasons, the one lately kissed by what could only have felt like the bullet of destiny, the other delighting in the newfound optimism of generational succession. In Michigan Pete and Chasten caught a glimpse of Kamala on TV while having a hearty breakfast of Beyond Meat patties with their little daughter, who asked: “Who is that nice lady?” To which they replied in unison: “Sweetie, that’s the next president of the United States.” Yet at any time —at any time— the Kyffhäuser effect could throw this great process into chaos, as some ancient stalactite-encrusted potentate emerges from the bowels of the earth, shakes off the dust of ages, and, full breath now regained, exhales the sulfurous fumes of his former refuge, lays waste to these poll-mongers and soundbite-traders, and restores the greatness of his realm.

Stranger things have happened…