TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW The Mexican rebel leader Pancbo Villa started out as the chief of a gang of bandits, but after revolution broke o...
TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW The Mexican rebel leader Pancbo Villa started out as the chief of a gang of bandits, but after revolution broke out in Mexico in 1910, he became a kind of folk hero-robbing trains and giving the money to the poor, leading daring raids, and charming the ladies with romantic escapades. His exploits fascinated Americans-he seemed a man from another era, part Robin Hood, part Don Juan. After a few years of bitter fighting, however, General Carranza emerged as the victor in the Revolution; the defeated Villa and his troops went back horne, to the northem state of Chihuahua. His army dwindled and he tumed to banditry again, damaging his popularity. Finally, perhaps out of desperation, he began to rail against the United States, the gringos, whom he blamed for his troubles. In March of 1916, Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico. Rampaging through the town, he and his gang killed seventeen American soldiers and civilians. President Woodrow Wilson, like many Americans, had admired Villa; now, however, the bandit needed to be punished. Wilson's advisers urged hirn to send troops into Mexico to capture Villa.
For a power as large as the United States, they argued, not to strike back at an army that had invaded its territory would send the worst kind of signal. Furthermore, they continued, many Americans saw Wilson as a pacifist, a principle the public doubted as a response to violence; he needed to prove his mettle and manliness by ordering the use of force. The pressure on Wilson was strong, and before the month was out, with the approval of the Carranza govemment, he sent an army of ten thousand soldiers to capture Pancbo Villa. The venture was called the Punitive Expedition, and its leader was the dashing General John J. Pershing, who had defeated guerrillas in the Philippines and Native Americans in the American Southwest. Certainly Pershing could find and overpower Pancho Villa. The Punitive Expedition became a sensational story, and carloads of U.S. reporters followed Pershing into action. The campaign, they wrote, would be a test of American power. The soldiers carried the latest in weaponry, communicated by radio, and were supported by reconnaissance from the air. In the first few months, the troops split up into small units to comb the wilds of northem Mexico. The Americans offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to Villa's capture. But the Mexican people, who had been disillusioned with Villa when he had retumed to banditry,
now idolized hirn for facing this mighty American army. They began to give Pershing false leads: Villa had been seen in this village, or in that mountain hideaway, airplanes would be dispatcbed, troops would scurry after them, and no one would ever see hirn. The wily bandit seemed to be always one step ahead of the American military. By the summer of that year, the expedition had swelled to 123,000 men. They suffered through the stultifying heat, the mosquitoes, the wild terrain.
Trudging over a countryside in which they were already resented, THE FOX A'il) THE CRAI'ES A starving fox ... saw a cluster Gf luscious-looking grapes of purplish luster Dangling above hirn on a trellis-frarne. He would have dearly liked thern for his lunch, But when he tried and failed to reaeh the buneh: "Ah weil, it's rnore than likely they're not sweetGood only for green fools to eat!" Wasn 't he wise to say they were unripe Rather than whine and gripe? FABLES, JEAN DE LA FONTAINE, 1 621-1695 Gnce when G. K. Chesterton's eeonornie views were abused in print by George Bernard Shaw, his friends waited in vain for hirn to reply. Historian Hilaire Belloe reproaehed hirn. "My dear BeUoe, " Chesterton said, "f have answered hirn. To a rnan of Shaw's wit, silen ce is the one unbearable repartee. " THE LITTLE, BRüWN BOOK OF ANECDOTES, CLIFTON FADIMAN, ED., 1985 LAW 36 301 TI IL \CiS "'oll TIIE C ,\ IWI:'iI,: K An ass had once by some aecident lost his tai!, which was a grievous afflietion to him; and he was everywhere see king after it, being fool enough to think he could get it set on again. He passed through a meadow, and afterwards got into a garden. The gardener seeing him, and not able to endure the mischief he was doing in trampling down his plants, fell into a violent rage, ran to the ass, and ne ver standing on the ceremony of a pillory,
cut off both his ears, and beat him out ofthe ground. Thus the ass, who bemoaned the loss of his taU, was in far greater affiiction when he saw himself without ears. FABLES, PILPAY, INDIA, FOlJRTH CENTlJRY rm: I'IWIl IC\ 0\ Onee, when the Tokudaiji minister of the right was chief of the imperial police, he was holding a meeting of his staff at the middle gate when an ox belonging to an official named Akikane got loose and wandered into the ministry building. It climbed up on 302 LAW 36 they infuriated both the local people and the Mexican government. At one point Pancho Villa hid in a mountain cave to recover from a gunshot wound he received in a skirmish with the Mexican army; looking down from his aerie, he could watch Pershing lead the exhausted American troops back and forth across the mountains, never getting any closer to their goal. All the way into winter, Villa played his cat-and-mouse game, Americans came to see the affair as a kind of slapstick farce-in fact they began to admire Villa again, respecting his resourcefulness in eluding a superior force_ In January of 1917, Wilson finally ordered Pershing's withdrawal. As the troops made their way back to American territory, rebel forces pursued them, forcing the US. Army to use airplanes to protect its rear flanks. The Punitive Expedition was being punished itself-it had turned into a retreat of the most humiliating sort. Interpretation Woodrow Wilson organized the Punitive Expedition as a show of force: He would teach Pancho Villa a lesson and in the process show the world that no one, large or small, could attack the mighty United States and get away with it. The expedition would be over in a few weeks, and Villa would be forgotten. That was not how it played out. The longer the expedition took, the more it focused attention on the Americans' incompetence and on Villa's cleverness_ Soon what was forgotten was not Villa but the raid that had started it all. As a minor annoyance became an international embarrassment, and the enraged Americans dispatched more troops, the imbalance between the size of the pursuer and the size of the pursued-who still managed to stay free-made the affair a joke. And in the end this white eIephant of an army had to lumber out of Mexico, humiliated. The Punitive Expedition did the opposite of what it set out to do: It left Villa not only free but more popular than ever. What could Wilson have done differently? He could have pressured the Carranza government to catch Villa for him_ Alternatively, since many Mexicans had tired of Villa before the Punitive Expedition began, he could have worked quietly with them and won their support for a much smaller raid to capture the bandit.
He could have organized a trap on the American side of the border, anticipating the next raid. Or he could have ignored the matter altogether for the time being, waiting for the Mexicans themselves to do away with Villa of their own accord. Remember: You choose to let things bother you_ You can just as easily choose not to notice the irritating offender, to consider the matter trivial and unworthy of your interest. That is the powerful move. What you do not react to cannot drag you down in a futile engagement. Your pride is not involved. The best lesson you can teach an irritating gnat is to consign it to oblivion by ignoring it. If it is impossible to ignore (Pancho Villa had in fact killed American citizens), then conspire in secret to do away with it, but never inadvertently draw attention to the bothersome insect that will go away or die on its own. If you waste time and energy in such entanglements, it is your own fault. Learn to play the card of disdain and turn your back on what cannot harm you in the long run. Just think-it cost your government $130 million to try to get me. I took them over rough, hilly country. Sometimes for fifty miles at a stretch they had no water. They had nothing but the sun and mosquitoes .... And nothing was gained. Pancho Villa, 1878-1 923 OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW In the year 1527, King Henry VIII of England decided he had to find a way to get rid of his wife, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine had failed to produce a son, a male heir who would ensure the continuance of his dynasty, and Henry thought he knew why: He had read in the Bible the passage, "And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless." Before marrying Henry, Catherine had married his older brother Arthur, but Arthur had died five months later. Henry had waited an appropriate time, then had married his brother's widow. Catherine was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, and by marrying her Henry had kept alive a valuable alliance. Now, however, Catherine had to assure hirn that her brief marriage with Arthur had never been consummated. Otherwise Henry would view their relationship as incestuous and their marriage as null and void. Catherine insisted that she had remained a virgin through her marriage to Arthur, and Pope Clement VII supported her by giving his blessing to the union, which he could not have done had he considered it incestuous. Yet after years of marriage to Henry, Catherine had failed to produce a son, and in the early 1520s she had entered menopause. To the king this could only mean one thing: She had lied about her virginity, their union was incestuous, and God had punished them. There was another reason why Henry wanted to get rid of Catherine: He had fallen in love with a younger woman, Anne Boleyn. Not only was he in love with her, but if he married her he could still hope to sire a legitimate son.
The marriage to Catherine had to be annulled. For this, however, Henry had to apply to the Vatican. But Pope Clement would never annul the marriage. By the summer of 1527, rumors spread throughout Europe that Henry was about to attempt the impossible-to annul his marriage against Clement's wishes. Catherine would never abdicate, let alone voluntarily enter a nunnery, as Henry had urged her. But Henry had his own strategy: He stopped sleeping in the same bed with Catherine, since he considered her his sister-in-Iaw, not his lawful wife. He insisted on calling her Princess the dais where the chief was seated and lay there, chewing its cud. Everyone was sure that this was some grave portent. and urged that the ox be sent to a yinyang diviner. However. the prime minister, the father ofthe minister of the right, said, "An ox has no discrimination. It has legs-there is nowhere it won't go. It does not make sense to deprive an underpaid official of the wretched ox he needs in order to attend court. " He returned the ox to its owner and changed the maUing on which it had lain. No untoward event of any kind occurred afterward. They say that if you see a prodigy and do not treat it as such,
its character as a prodigy is destroyed. ESSAYS IN IDLENESS, KENKO, JAPAN, FOURTEENTH CENTURY LAW 36 303 And in this view it is advisable to let everyone of your acquaintancewhether man or woman-feel now and then that you could very welt dispense with their company. This will consolidate friendship. Nay, with most people there will be no harm in occasionalty mixing a grain of disdain with your treatment of them; that will make them value your friendship alt the more. Chi non stima vien stirnato, as a subtle Itahan proverb has it-to disregard is to win regard. But if we realty think very highly of a person, we shoutd conceal it from hirn hke a crime. This is not a very gratifying thing to do, but it is right. Why, a dog will not bear being treated too kindly, let alone a man! ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. 1 788-1860 '1'111': \10" " f: \ A1\1J '!' I I I-: P I' :'IS A monkey was carrying two handfuts of peas. One httle pea dropped out. He tried to pick it up, and spilt twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and spilt them alt. Then he lost his temper, scattered the peas in alt direclions, and ran away. FABLES. LEO TOLSTOY. 1 828-1910 304 LAW 36 Dowager of Wales, her title as Arthur's widow. Finally, in 153 1, he banished her from court and shipped her off to a distant castle. The pope ordered rum to return her to court, on pain of excommunication, the most severe penalty a Catholic could suffer. Henry not only ignored this threat, he insisted that his marriage to Catherine had been dissolved, and in 1533 he married Anne Boleyn. Clement refused to recognize the marriage, but Henry did not care. He no longer recognized the pope's authority, and proceeded to break with the Roman Catholic Church, establishing the Church of England in its stead, with the king as the head of the new church. And so, not surprisingly, the newly formed Church of England proclaimed Anne Boleyn England's rightful queen. The pope tried every threat in the book, but nothing worked. Henry simply ignored him. Clement fumed-no one had ever treated him so contemptuously. Henry had humiliated hirn and he had no power of recourse. Even excommunication (which he constantly threatened but never carried out) would no longer matter. Catherine too feit the devastating sting of Henry's disdain. She tried to fight back, but in appealing to Henry her words fell on deaf ears, and soon they fell on no one's. Isolated from the court, ignored by the king, mad with anger and frustration, Catherine slowly deteriorated, and finally died in January of 1536, from a cancerous tumor of the heart.
Interpretation When you pay attention to a person, the two of you become partners of sorts, each moving in step to the actions and reactions of the other. In the process you lose your initiative. It is a dynamic of all interactions: By acknowledging other people, even if only to fight with them, you open yourself to their influence. Had Henry locked horns with Catherine, he would have found hirnself mired in endless arguments that would have weakened his resolve and eventually worn rum down. (Catherine was a strong, stubborn woman.) Had he set out to convince Clement to change rus verdict on the marriage's validity, or tried to compromise and negotiate with hirn, he would have gotten bogged down in Clement's favorite tactic: playing for time, promising flexibility, but actually getting what popes always gottheir way. Henry would have none of this. He played a devastating power game-total disdain. By ignoring people you cancel them out. This unsettles and infuriates them-but since they have no dealings with you, there is no thing they can do. This is the offensive aspect of the law. Playing the card of contempt is immensely powerful, for it lets you determine the conditions of the conflict. The war is waged on your terms. This is the ultimate power pose: You are the king, and you ignore what offends you. Watch how this tactic infuriates people-half of what they do is to get your attention, and when you withhold it from them, they flounder in frustration.
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