Loving the Pope: There was a touch of naiveté and amnesia in the surprise and wonder often expressed last week at the love-struck reactions the Pope evoked. It should have been familiar from the personality cults of the last century — Stalin, Mao, Peron etc.

I think the cult of personality is the apt model here, rather than the pop star or celebrity. The personality cult propagates an ideology, a demand to view society and to behave in a certain way — which fits the Pope — rather than merely being about fame. Those demands can be as grave as a willingness to die for the cause; commitment to an individual has seemed one way to secure that.

The phenomenon and the reactions reach far back. During the rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada, a loyalist, who had his leg smashed by a cannonball in a battle near Niagara Falls, asked to be handed his severed limb, raised it over his head, gave three cheers for Queen Victoria — who had just ascended the throne an ocean away as a teenager — and died happy, according to accounts.

In 1869, in War and Peace, Tolstoy portrayed a character’s reaction to his youthful leader, before the battle of Austerlitz.“He was filled with happiness at his nearness to the tsar . . . He was happy as a lover. . . As he drew near everything grew brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more festive . . . Nearer and nearer . . . came that sun shedding beams of mild and majestic light . . . The tsar’s eyes met Rostov’s and rested on them for not more than two seconds (it seemed to Rostov that he understood everything) . . .”

This moment, the brief personal encounter with the leader, and many other elements are utterly conventional. Sharon Dunn, for the National Post, had one last week — “as the Pope passed, he looked toward me and gave a blessing or at least attempted to. ‘Sorry, your, er, holiness,’ I said, raising my camera . . .”

Tolstoy goes on, “He really was in love with the tsar. . . And he was not the only man to experience that feeling during those memorable days. . . Nine-tenths of the men in the Russian army were then in love.”

I’d say it’s inaccurate in cases such as these to refer to charisma, a term coined by Max Weber for the sheer personal force by which some leaders command obedience. These effects are the results and trappings of already having power, even if the magnetism of a leader can add to them.

Actor Maurice Podbrey once expressed anxiety about playing the role of a messianic figure. But then he decided, “If everyone on-stage treats you as if you have charisma, the audience will assume it’s because you do!”

Loving the USA: There is a screed circulating on the Internet called “An airline pilot challenges Arab Muslims in America.” It says, “I demand to know, and I have a right to know, whether or not you love America. . . I want to see Arab Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting ‘Allah Bless America.’ . . . I want to know where every Arab Muslim in this country stands. . . It is up to YOU, to show ME.”

It is purportedly signed by a captain for American Airlines, which says there is an investigation to determine whether it is a hoax, making one feel that, if they had no employee by that name, there would be no need to investigate. The letter first appeared under another name on a site last October.

It has been picked up by various Web sites and organizations, including one run by an evangelical Christian Arab American who spoke in Winnipeg as part of the Asper Foundation Lecture Series, according to the Winnipeg Free Press. All this makes it more than marginal, and the tone, I’d say, catches some of the distemper of the times, especially in the U.S.

Americans are adroit at engineering pissing matches about patriotism. During the Cold War, they invented the odd notion of un-American, which applied only to Americans, so they could accuse each other of not being truly American, or American enough. In those days, the test of choice was the loyalty oath; in the current phase, it may be the profession of love.

There is something off-putting, to say the least, about such a demand. For one thing, if you know a country (or person) well enough to love it, you probably know it enough to hate it as well, and such feelings are highly personal. It’s not the same as being asked to say, I love New York or Paris, which means I love being there, not I love everything this country does, including its foreign policy.

Americans are also adroit at demanding love and loyalty from the rest of the world (“you’re either with us or . . .”), but it tends to be mainly Canadians who get sucked into trying to provide them. “I love Americans, and this past year has only deepened that,” wrote John Ibbitson in his final the Globe and Mail column from the U.S. As for me, I think it’s sufficient to be appalled at the loss of life last fall and try to prevent it from happening again, there and elsewhere. But you just know that’s not likely to seem enough.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.