Ioannis Metaxas didn’t seem like the friendliest guy. The general was given a space for national political leadership in 1935, when he was appointed as Greece’s minister of army affairs by the country’s king, George II—himself probably not on the throne by honest means. From there, Metaxas moved on to the office of premier, and then just decided to take as much as the king would allow; in 1936, he installed himself as the leader of the dictatorial Fourth of August Regime, which wasn’t that much different in spirit from its fascist counterparts in other areas of Europe, cracking down on the opposition and drawing upon idealized nationalist images for support.
So Metaxas shared Mussolini’s mindset about how to govern the masses—but that didn’t mean he’d let a like-minded colleague make his decisions for him. On October 28, 1940, the Italian ambassador passed a message from Il Duce to the prime minister: you’ve got three hours to tell me how you’re going to react to my (ahem) proposal to occupy parts of your country. Metaxas didn’t need any time at all to decide; he told the ambassador then and there (in French), “Well, it’s war.” The clear rejection of Mussolini’s proposal was made even more absolute in retellings of the conversation, which had Metaxas simply and vehemently stating, “Oχι!” (“No!”) No doubt about Metaxas’s response, then—or Mussolini’s; the Italians moved in from Albania that morning, and so began Greece’s involvement in World War II.
It was a clear case of, as Matthew 5:7 states, “Let[ting] your word be ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no,’” and of accepting those words’ consequences. Quite a different matter from the famed Bartleby, Herman Melville’s apathetic copyist (or scrivener) who, in response to being asked to perform tasks for which he was hired, simply replies, “I would prefer not to.” He’s doing nothing but being honest—but unused to such honesty, or, as his former boss, the lawyer, says, to anything but “instant compliance” with his wishes, said boss is so thrown for a loop, he hands the job off to another underling. And so the routine goes, Bartleby answering the same way to all requests, doing no work at all, turning the office into his full-time living space, and eventually causing the lawyer to just up and move his offices elsewhere, since he can’t convince Bartleby to leave. Instead of making the scrivener suffer the consequences of what comes down to bored insubordination, the lawyer, not knowing how to deal with what seems to be such a vague answer, ends up letting Bartleby make pretty significant decisions about his own business and life for him.
Nevit Dilmen, Erect X-ray of abdomen. Ileus, false color. Used on a CC BY-SA 3.0 license via Wikimedia Commons.
It’s a weird situation we’re in right now, in which a president who’s clearly been voted out of office is just as clearly telling us he’s not going down without a fight, even and especially if it’s a dirty one, making use of all the threats and false claims he can get his hands on. And to top that off, we’ve got said president’s party, which has long claimed to stand staunchly with strict, originalist interpretations of the US Constitution and adherence to law and order, practically begging this would-be dictator to let them stay in his good graces, sacred Constitution be damned. In taking pains not to say one way or the other whether Biden won the election, most Republican officeholders seem to be trying to walk some sort of drunkard’s line between accepting reality and not pissing off a vengeful man-child, hoping to find some way to emerge from this situation with their heads not ripped off their shoulders and an office still awaiting them in D.C. Even those who seem to acknowledge Trump’s defeat are almost comically vague about blinking once for yes, two for no, hedging their bets until the absolute last minute, trying as desperately as any ten-year-old in trouble to evade any repercussions at all.
Of course, Graham et al aren’t the only ones who make us question whether humans really can walk around without backbones; with the exception of figures such as Bernie Sanders, AOC, and maybe a few others, it seems a career in politics tends to destroy your ability to take a strong position on anything; to make your yes clearly yes and your no clearly no; to take any action without passing every little possibility by either focus groups or your big donors. What are the Democrats doing, after all—what have they been doing—all this time? The Onion was spot-on with its made-up scary warning that Democrats would all wear the same color on the same day if Trump refused to leave office; Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin was pretty clear that her own party often doesn’t seem to do much more than talk down to potential voters it believes are unaware of their own interests. Sure, Pelosi can bring the snark, and maybe that’s all that’s effective with someone like Donald Trump. But if that’s all you’ve got, add it to Ben Mathis-Lilley calling out the party in 2018 as being “reflexively timid on issues of policy, strategy, and style,” and you have nothing but out-of-touch officeholders just as terrified of falling out of the good graces of big donors as their Republican counterparts are of getting on the wrong side of Trump.
What we have is a political universe in which there’s almost no one able even to assert they’d prefer not to do or say something in particular; a world in which hardly anyone but the coup-plotter and dispenser of mayhem is even willing to make that vague statement clearly. If he managed to find the energy, Bartleby would shake his head at the needless inefficiency of it all.
I can only imagine that, had Mitch McConnell been in Metaxas’s position in 1940, poor Greece would have been told, “Mr. Mussolini has a right to explore all options for lodging his troops. Greek hospitality is our age-old tradition. We cannot deny him the right to visit.” Meanwhile, an opposition that looked like today’s Democrats would simply have smirked at the prime minister’s penchant for putting workers and youth in military uniforms. Everyone would have muddled around, hoping to gain enough time to save their own skin, or wishing really, really hard that they could just make the little problem at the Albanian border disappear.
Metaxas’s clear and resounding no could not absolve him or his regime from what it had done—and would continue to do—to Greece. But that decisive refusal left no doubt about what the course of action would be, the danger it would mean for him or the country, or about how willing its citizens would be to resist first the Italians and then the Germans. October 28, known as the Anniversary of the No, is now a national holiday in Greece, and is celebrated in Greek diaspora communities around the world.
I’m wondering, as we continue to wade through this ridiculous post-election period, when we’re going to get our own resounding official no to our present autocrat and his clown car full of enablers. That declaration won’t mean, unfortunately, that the people who purport to represent us will straighten up once and for all, and speak or act frankly, or that all of us little people will manage to join hands and stand together against even a single common threat. But if the day ever comes when lawmakers finally declare enough’s enough, I’ll certainly be willing to commemorate it, especially if the ceremonial crying of “No!” will help them remember how to speak and act without all this fumbling guile.