#6 The Virtuous Despot …

At two hundred and seventy kilometers per hour, we race through the night. We race north, and in the passenger seat of a large Mercedes with a powerful engine, I feel as I felt in a previous life in the back of an American Humvee—I’m Dutch, by the way—that carried me across the Afghan province of Uruzgan. The Americans who had taken me under their wings in Uruzgan usually drove as fast as the terrain and the situation allowed—never faster than about sixty kilometers per hour—and accepted the risk of hitting a roadside bomb with an admirable fatalism, which, for lack of options, I embraced during our first patrol together. Still, not a day went by without me wondering whether I was the only one in our Humvee struggling with that sickening feeling of powerlessness, which gripped me as soon as I closed the Humvee door—and has me firmly in its grip once again.

Weeks on end, in another previous life, I participated in courses to learn how to push large cars with powerful engines to their limits. Instructors quickly dispelled the bravado with which I started the first course, and just as quickly, I realized I still had a lot to learn. Super cool, what I learned, the most important part of it perhaps that I should only push cars to their limits when there is no other option. Now, there is nothing more dangerous than telling someone who is a bad driver—which the driver of this large Mercedes, who is also my publisher, is—that she or he is a bad driver, so I surrender to the fatalism I once embraced in Uruzgan, and ignoring the sickening feeling of powerlessness that comes with it, I force my thoughts to Uruzgan, where I once spent two wonderful years.

Dutch engineers in Uruzgan demolished Camp Ripley, the eh... say, rugged, manly tent camp that had sheltered many an American serviceman over the years and where I lived. In its place, those Dutch engineers built a neither rugged nor manly armored city out of heavily armored containers, which they christened Camp Holland. It was a pity, but I found a solution within Camp Holland to keep housing myself in a manly manner. The Americans left—also a pity—Dutch troops began to trickle in, and after some months of trickling in, they started what they called a reconstruction mission—without first trying to ascertain whether there was anything to reconstruct in Uruzgan.

While still operating with the Americans, I traveled all over Uruzgan. If ever a Dutch platoon left the armored city, it never ventured more than a few kilometers from it, and unlike my American friends in their Humvees, such a platoon advanced at a walking pace. Engineers, searching for roadside bombs with metal detectors, shuffled ahead of six, seven, sometimes eight or even more vehicles, an approach that was, in fact, more dangerous for the soldiers in those vehicles than accepting the risk of hitting a roadside bomb. Enemy fighters could open fire on a slowly moving platoon at any given moment, and heavy Dutch casualties, in that case, were inevitable.

Fortunately, there were no enemy fighters in Uruzgan—not during the few years the Dutch armed forces supposedly reconstructed the province. There was some opposition, but it mostly manifested itself grumbling, rarely violently. The clumsy way the Dutch armed forces operated in Uruzgan, however, spurred a few hooligans among that opposition into action. Those hooligans did indeed plant roadside bombs, and because their bombs were relatively simple and contained few metal parts, they sometimes escaped detection ...

Plan after plan I submitted to make it impossible for the hooligans among our opposition to plant their roadside bombs. Those plans involved the deployment of small units that would not sleep in the armored city at night, and that eh… that was too much for the Dutch armed forces—those same armed forces now making plans to keep the Russians out of Europe by participating in an EU army—and ... the speed with which we race north decreases as we approach the Danish town of Hirtshals, from where, in the course of the coming morning, we’ll take the ferry to Norway to interview Professor Glenn Diesen, the day after tomorrow, author of The Ukraine war & the Eurasian world order, which I translated into Dutch. Good book! A book, I'm sure, that will open the eyes of even the most die-hard mainstream media aficionado to the possibility that Russia did not invade peaceful Ukraine unprovoked.

Slowly, we drive through Hirtshals. We find the spot where we’ll board the ferry to Norway, but since we're way too early, we continue driving along the quay, past the part of Hirtshals’s fishing fleet that isn’t out at sea. Hirtshals looks like a fine little town—a cross between the Dutch housing developments where I grew up and the English village of Saffron Walden, where Heidi, Moos the German shepherd, and I lived until a year and a half ago. I’d like to take a walk through the town but feel as if I've spent a day in a Humvee, and as the early dawn gives way to a bright day, I take my backpack out of the trunk of the Mercedes, which has come to a halt on a parkingenplads near the beach.

At the foot of a dune, I sit down among the sand reeds. I boil water from a canteen in a kettle on my gas stove and suppress the sadness that comes over me when I think of Moos, who died a few months ago and no longer scurries around me when I make coffee. Conscientiously, I pour boiling water over the coffee in the filter on the rim of my Stanley thermos. As the water seeps through, I roll out my sleeping bag. I drink the coffee I poured into the cap of the thermos, crawl into my sleeping bag, think wistfully of the cozy corner I once occupied in a tent at Camp Ripley in Uruzgan, and fall asleep.

Mid-June 2024. At twenty-seven knots, we sail across the Skagerrak. The sun is out in full, the sea calm, nothing wrong. Yet, something is gnawing at me. I don't know what and to take my mind off it, I think about the trip I once made from Malmö, in Sweden, to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, in a canoe, which was considered ideal for smooth inland waters—I later read in an outdoor magazine. No sun the day I crossed the Sound, a strait between Sweden and Danmark, the sea rough. But back then, struggling across the Sound, I enjoyed myself more than I do today on the Skagerrak, which has nothing to do with how Heidi and I failed to build a life in Catalonia, in Spain, where we moved after we’d failed to build a life in Saffron Walden. The result of our repeated failures is that we’re homeless once again, though that’s the kind of bitter cup we’ve learned to laugh about, and … I’d better cut the crap, for I know well what’s gnawing at me. I keep shooting myself—and Heidi—in the foot by translating books for beads and mirrors.

All my life, I’ve lived by the principle that I’ll never lack for anything as long as I strive for perfection, whatever I do—even if it’s making coffee. Admittedly, my desires, and Heidi's as well, are modest, but that pursuit of perfection—which takes no more effort than cutting corners—has always led to something positive. Until a few months ago, I never doubted the infallibility of my principle of perfection. Now, four translations later, final editing included, all positivity seems to have eroded from my life. My own work has been on hold for months, and eh... man, I have to accept—one day soon preferably—that I’ve chosen to work with a publisher who doesn’t know how to spell perfectionism and who is in for the opposite of beads and mirrors only. But I believe—and that’s what’s doing me in—that Diesen's work and that of the other authors I translated deserves to be read. In the meantime, though, it feels as if I’ve once again been sucked from a rugged, manly tent camp into an armored city, playing a supporting role in my publisher's movie.

For over a month, I worked seven days a week on the translation of Diesen's book, and now—not even for beads and mirrors—I’m sitting on a bench on the deck of the Superspeed II, which is carrying us to Norway, and that—damn it!—is not a problem. In my world, something positive always comes out of a trip like this. But as I pour coffee into the cap of my thermos, I realize I’ve truly allowed myself to be sucked out of my world and into an armored city, where my principle of perfection is worthless. My world isn’t a world of driving irresponsibly fast from gas station to gas station in a large Mercedes with a powerful engine. My world is a world of struggling across the Sound in a canoe, of living in rugged tent camps, of ... two girls pose for the phone one of them is holding up. Both are wearing black hoodies with a patch on it in the red, white, and green of the Italian flag. Struggling across the Sound! Tent camps! The Italian flag! Vespa! Maybe something positive will come out of this trip after all ...

After our failure to build a life in Catalonia was final, Heidi and I traveled to the Netherlands, from where—from a Sibley tent, actually, in which we're temporarily living on a field next to my publisher's office—Heidi is now busy looking for a new place to live. What if, once we've found that place, we start planning a months-long trip all across Europe on a Vespa loaded with simple camping gear? A trip like that would provide me with enough material to write a new book, and both, the trip and the writing of the book, would undoubtedly bring me back to my world.

A black Vespa with striping in the colors of the Italian flag on one side of the front screen. Trivial detail, that striping, but important in my world. Two black helmets with the same striping—red, white, and green—just off-center. A small case on the front rack, a larger one on the rear rack. Standard scooter cases are too round, I’m afraid, so I divide the gear that’s piling up on the deck of the Superspeed II between two square cases I’ve built myself and store some gear and clothing under the Vespa's seat. I unpack the cases again, discard some gear, replace other gear with gear of smaller volume, repack the cases, and ... the speed with which we cross the Skagerrak decreases as we approach the Norwegian town of Larvik, the Vespa perfectly packed.

Next to me, on the edge of a water well in front of the Løvøv Chapel on the Løvøya Peninsula, south of Oslo, water comes to a boil in the kettle on my gas stove. Diesen’s and my Dutch publisher and I are staying in a cottage on the Løvøya Peninsula, and it was good to meet Glenn Diesen in the garden of that cottage this morning. The interview with him went sideways because part of the recording equipment had been left behind in the Netherlands. Neither Diesen nor I was to blame, but our mutual pursuit of perfection flowed ingloriously into the Oslofjord, and eh... whatever.

Heidi, when I called her yesterday, laughed and fell in with my Vespa plan, though she pointed out that no Vespa would materialize as long as I’m hiding in an armored city—she used different words than armored city—after which she asked me to send an email to the owner of a small house for rent just underneath the castle of Antequera, a town in Andalusia, in Spain. From the reply I received to that email, I gathered that our homelessness will soon come to an end. Wonderful. But in the meantime, a Vespa has made itself comfortable in my head, and while enjoying the peace and quiet on the Løvøya Peninsula, Heidi and I just—this time next year—ended up in a quandary in Estonia. Do we take the ferry to Helsinki, in Finland, to ride our Vespa from there to the North Cape, in Norway, or do we turn east and visit St. Petersburg, in Russia, first? I eh... I have no idea whether we can even enter Russia on a Vespa, and my thoughts jump to the Dutch armed forces, which—by participating in an EU army—are making plans to keep the Russians out of Europe.

Conscientiously pouring boiling water over the coffee in the filter on the rim of my thermos, I chuckle inwardly as I try to imagine the Dutch soldiers I met in Uruzgan—most of whom never leaving the safety of Camp Holland for the four months their tour lasted—engaging the Russians. Quite a relief it is that they don't have to. No Russian is thinking of invading Europe, and again, I chuckle inwardly as I recall how, from elementary school onward, I was drilled to shout from the rooftops that I was privileged to have been born in a democracy, not in a country ruled by a despot or dictator. Despots and dictators, unlike democratically elected leaders, were immoral! I eh... I doubted that, but I kept my mouth shut, having realized early on that freedom of speech only applies to those who sense what can safely be said. I did my time at school, and during the time I’d left, I did what I could to actually learn something, which led me to discover that, with a few exceptions, despots and dictators were and are mostly virtuous. Unlike democratically elected leaders, they ruled and rule in the interests of their people. Democratically elected leaders on the other hand, with fewer exceptions, ruled and rule in their own interests and can only be prevented from acting immorally by a people deeply engaged in the affairs of the state.

Reading a newspaper and watching the evening news every day, as I was drilled to do as a child, does not come close to being engaged in the affairs of the state—let alone deeply—partly because newspapers and the evening news report only what is supplied by a small group of people who—quite successfully—tempt democratically elected leaders to act immorally. Reading a newspaper and watching the evening news every day as an expression of being engaged in the affairs of state is tantamount to idleness, and idleness and living in a democracy are so incompatible that a people who think they can live idly in a democracy will—after briefly passing through an ochlocracy—inevitably be sucked into a nasty kind of dictatorship—call it a technocracy—ruled by that small group of people who supply newspapers and the evening news with news—their news—and tempt democratically elected leaders to act immorally.

Anyone who ignores newspapers and the evening news and reads, for example, Diesen's book instead will quickly understand that the Russians would only invade Europe if Europe posed an existential threat to Russia. Europe, in its present state of chaos, poses an existential threat only to itself—and the Russians are quite aware of that. So why an EU army? Anyone who ignores newspapers and the evening news also understands that Europe’s youth cannot possibly be trained to become combat-ready soldiers capable of taking on the Russians. Europe’s youth will hence not be trained to take on the Russians, but will be trained instead to serve as armed law enforcement officers—guaranteeing the survival of the dictatorship that Europeans are idly allowing themselves to be sucked into ...

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