By W.D. Ehrhart
Given the state of the world these days—endless war in Ukraine, ongoing genocide in Gaza, the unprovoked and ill-considered attack on Iran, and political mayhem here in the United States, we could all use a good laugh. And maybe the funniest movie I’ve ever seen is “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Released originally in 1975, it has held up well over all these years, and I return to it periodically whenever I need to remind myself to laugh.
The Frenchman on the castle wall may be the funniest scene (actually two scenes) ever filmed. But the scene that really sticks with me, and has become particularly relevant with the resurrection of U.S. President #45 in the form of U.S. President #47, is the confrontation between King Arthur and a peasant named Dennis.
When Dennis asks Arthur how he got to be king, Arthur replies, “The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.”
“Listen,” Dennis replies, “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.”
I’ve been pondering that assertion for half a century, and the longer I live and the more I learn, I am beginning to wonder if “some farcical aquatic ceremony” involving “some moistened bint lobbing scimitars” really is any less valid than the method we use for choosing our leaders in this country today.
It is no secret that I am not a big fan of the man currently occupying what he has turned into the Whitewash House. How millions of my fellow citizens don’t seem to notice that he is enriching himself, his family, and his super-rich friends while kicking the rest of us to the gutter is really quite astounding, and calls into question the whole electoral process in this country.
But the problem is really much deeper than this president and our recent elections. It goes all the way back to the Constitution itself, a document that was written primarily to protect the property rights of the wealthy white elite who had power then and largely still hold power today.
Many of those wealthy white powerful men—and they were all men—were also slaveholders, and in order to get them to agree to join a union with non-slaveholding states, the Constitution included an assortment of provisions that guaranteed those slaveholders disproportionate power in the new nation.
And while slavery itself was finally abolished—well, sort of—after a bloody civil war, the constitutional provisions guaranteeing rural and less populous states disproportionate power at the federal level are still in place. These include, among the most egregiously undemocratic provisions, the Electoral College, which makes it possible for a presidential candidate to be elected without winning a majority of the votes nationwide (something that has happened twice already in the 21st century), and the provision giving every state two senators regardless of the population of the state, which allows a senator from Wyoming, for instance, representing fewer than 600,000 people, to have the same power as a senator from California, who represents 39,500,000 people.
This is not democracy. It doesn’t help that the 21st century Supreme Court has ruled that “corporations are people” and “money equals free speech,” but even a cursory review of U.S. history reveals that those with lots of money have always had grossly disproportionate influence in American politics, which is also—to say the least—highly undemocratic.
So maybe “strange women lying around in ponds distributing swords” isn’t that much less logical than the system we’ve got now. Dennis the peasant goes on to tell King Arthur that “supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses.” But “the masses” in this country have twice given a mandate for supreme executive power to a man who seems to think he himself is a king.
Legend has it that Arthur was a wise leader who embodied chivalry, honor, and nobility, a ruler who united his people and surrounded himself with the finest knights of his realm. I wonder how Kash Patel, Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem (or her replacement), and Pam Bondi (or her replacement) would stack up against the Knights of the Round Table.
Or for that matter, how would Colonel Bone Spur stack up against King Arthur? Maybe some strange woman lying in a pond distributing swords isn’t such a bad idea after all. Where is the Lady of the Lake when we need her?
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W.D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.