Aspiring to Second-Rate Dreams
When you go to college, everyone has their first choice, and then a
string of other colleges for safety. It’s more important to go to college, than
to go to THE college you want to go to, so, if your first choice school rejects
you, then you wind up spending four years at a “safety” school. That happened
to me, so I know what it feels like. It feels like the world is telling you you’re
actually something less than you hoped you were. But, on the other hand, no one
is immune from having their dreams abridged by circumstances in one way or
another.
Herbert Armstrong was born into 19th century Victorian society, a
society whose values would persist until he was 22 years old, when the First
World War would destroy everything. Nevertheless, Herbert would attempt to
recreate that society and its values within all his spheres of influence for
the rest of his life. Make no mistake, the European social order prevailed in
America just as much as it did in any of the other European colonies around the
world. But unlike the old world, because of the early independence of the
United States, as long as you were white, membership in the new world’s social upper
classes was up for grabs. Any man of the superior race who could make his
fortune could make a case for his own elite status among the other American “nobility.”
This appears to be the singular thing about which Herbert was most acutely
aware.
Even as a young sales and advertising executive, Herbert always believed
in his own aristocracy. He saw himself as someone who ought to belong to the
most elite class of society. He dreamed of becoming a powerful businessman and
rubbing shoulders with captains of industry, senators, and kings. However, one
does not usually make the kind of fortune necessary to join the ranks of
American aristocracy without being able to benefit financially from the efforts
of others. Also, in order to be a card-carrying member of the elite club and
gain the respect of other aristocrats, one generally needed to not only have
money, but also to demonstrate his power and status. This means that one really
ought to be able to boast that he has his own company when he goes out to
mingle at the country and yacht clubs.
Unfortunately, Herbert would somehow manage to lose his fortunes as
quickly as he could make them. Luckily for Herbert, he could avoid taking
responsibility for his mismanagement by spinning it as no fault of his own,
because it was god’s doing all along. The entire point of his autobiography is
how, although Herbert wanted to be a captain of industry, god wanted to make
him into his one-and-only end-time apostle, just like the story of Paul’s
miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus. At least, that’s what Herbert
wanted to sell to his followers. And sell it he did. Herbert was a born
salesman.
Where Herbert failed to become a captain of industry, he succeeded in
the non-profit sector, by building a Victorian-era church. Within this church,
he reinvented the old social class order of the previous century, despite the
fact that within broad society, all of these class structures were steadily
being eroded. Nevertheless, he realized that either sector could be just as
financially lucrative for him as an individual. As a non-profit, he could
conscript an army of volunteers, and pay his employees below-market wages,
leaving sufficient funds so that he could still manage lead his own personal “life
of Riley.” It did not matter that those funds were donated, rather than earned,
because at the end of the day, a dollar is a dollar and every dollar talks the
same language. Herbert eventually used "god's money" to buy his way
into elite circles and lived out his lifelong dream to rub shoulders with kings.
Unfortunately, this was not the original plan, but a strictly
second-rate “safety” dream. I think Herbert was privately disappointed with
himself that he didn't wind up as the CEO of his own advertising firm. Herbert
wanted to be able to stand toe-to-toe on equal terms with the Kennedys and
other members of the elite, but as a churchman, they would never quite take him
completely seriously. It must have felt like the world was telling him he wasn’t
quite as elite as he had hoped. Nothing could make up for this. I bet that upon
his deathbed, he must have been secretly miserable.
One conclusion that can be drawn from a private “behind the scenes”
viewpoint on Herbert’s life is that the only people he could ever have respect
for were other members of the elite social class to which he aspired. By
definition, anyone in his own organization, either as paid employees or as paying
members of the volunteer army were merely among the "help," and I am
sure he had nothing but private contempt for any of us. Our job was to keep his
silver polished and shut the eff up. Maybe we were deserving of a certain
amount of contempt for being such credulous fools, or maybe we weren’t, I am
not sure. (It is not my point to here discuss how much contempt we ought to
have for such hucksters as Herbert.) At any rate, the abuses within Armstrongism
are easily explained by understanding that Herbert was committed to using all
the tricks and tactics that the upper classes had always used - religion being
chief among these - to keep the lower classes down in their "proper"
place.
When you realize that this is the hard truth, it makes Dave Pack, Ron
Weinland, Gerald Flurry, Rod Meredith, and all the other Herbert Armstrong
wannabes seem totally ridiculous. If they really wanted to be another Herbert
Armstrong, they ought to have aspired to Herbert’s first-choice dream by
starting their own Fortune 500 company so they could mingle with other CEO's.
Instead they have aspired only to Herbert’s second-rate “safety” dream. But
even so, why would anyone want to be a carbon copy of someone else in the first
place? Why don’t these overinflated minions of Herbert have dreams of their
own? I guarantee that if Herbert were to rise from the grave today, he would
have nothing but contempt for his many impersonators. On balance, that contempt
would definitely be justified.
Andrew
