My Fascist Cat

Have you ever been driving along a familiar stretch of road, and at some point on the journey you have a slight jolt of panic when you realize that you don't recall the past couple of miles? That feeling is similar to what I felt this afternoon, when I realized it had been a week since I last stopped to put pen to paper, as it were. Where have the last seven days gone?

Work responsibilities and assignments are picking up, and once again the pinewood derby season is in full swing: these perhaps account for portions of the missing week. Peeing felines, typical household chores, and a delightful dinner date with my wife were also highlighting events, although I must say that there is a dramatic difference between enjoying a meal at Outback and having to stick my nose in a couch cushion to see if I could still smell pee from a suddenly territorial and bullying cat. Ahem, perhaps it is now time to redeem this post from the litter box of history, to a more genteel level of discourse.

I also took time this week to finish a book I started a few months ago by Frances Stoner Saunders, entitled The Woman Who Shot Mussolini. In her work, Saunders investigates the life of the Honorable Violet Gibson, daughter of Edward Gibson, Baron Ashbourne, Lord Chancellor of Ireland (1837-1913). Violet Gibson, for reasons known only to her, conceived and undertook a daring attempt to assassinate Benito Mussolini in 1926 Rome. She missed, clipping him only on the nose, and was thereby thwarted in what could have been a striking redirection of history. The failed attempt further secured the megalomaniacal rise of Mussolini and his brand of Italian fascism in the era between the first two world wars. Remarkably, Ms. Gibson was not executed, being instead declared insane and deported back to a British mental asylum for the rest of her life.

What I enjoyed most about the book was the way the author weaved in so many threads and colors of the period, such as the early adoration that Western leaders - including Churchill - had for Mussolini as the "Savior of Italy," the politics of the elite aristocracy and their fascination with fascism and socialism, an outbreak of Irish nationalism, and the prevailing ideas of psychiatry and the treatment of those who were truly mentally ill (and the scandal that many who were committed to such lunatic asylums suffered from nothing more severe than having "wrong political ideas," weak constitutions, and occasional bouts of depression). Indeed, some well-to-do families took advantage of the system to get rid of their more "socially unacceptable" relations. The book leaves open the question as to whether Gibson was as mentally ill as she was purported to be. Me, while I suspect some level of dissociative disorder, there seems to be plenty of evidence of a politically savvy and perceptive woman. This picture of Gibson, and whatever mental instability she may have had, was laid next to a picture of the narcissistic and paranoid Mussolini, leading one to wonder just who was in greater need of psychological attention.

This is what I love about history. There are so many influences pressing together at a moment in time, that while we can look at the basic facts of a single missed shot, the tapestry is far more complex, and far more telling, when taken as a whole. So while it is tempting to position the magnifying glass or the microscope over a single point of color, like a Seurat, it is worth the time to step back and view the brighter colors of the whole.