[Cross-posted from ProgressiveHistorians.]
Folks who think that "Goodbye, Cruel World" speeches only happen in the wacky world of the blogosphere need to think again. Such speeches have a long and storied history.
Perhaps the most famous GBCW speech of the twentieth century was delivered by Richard Nixon on November 7, 1962:
Nixon had delivered that rambling address after losing his bid to unseat Pat Brown as governor of California. Surprising reporters by venturing down from his hotel room the morning after his defeat, Nixon sneered at "all the members of the press [who] are so delighted that I have lost" and chided them for biased coverage. He concluded, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you."
Unfortunately for America, Nixon was one of those trolls who never seem to know when they are not wanted, and who are never able to stick to their GBCW pledges.
Not all such speeches have been bad, though. One of the most beautiful GBCWs was uttered by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Tribe on October 5, 1877. The history here is that the Nez Perce were ordered to relocate to an Idaho reservation, but Chief Joseph rebelled, leading a fighting retreat over 1500 miles of open country to the very doorstep of Canada. There, he was forced into open combat with the United States Army, an engagement which quickly turned into a bloody battle. Appalled at the carnage, Chief Joseph surrendered, uttering these memorable words:
I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are - perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.
Sometimes people have made the choice to GBCW without rancor or rage, despite the upset they may have felt at the situation in which they found themselves. One such speech was delivered on December 10, 1936, by King Edward VIII of England. Edward was a popular king, but his deep love of American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson resulted in his having to choose between marrying her and retaining the throne. Romantic that he was, Edward chose love over power, as he explained to a stunned British Empire:
You all know the reasons which have impelled me to renounce the throne. But I want you to understand that in making up my mind I did not forget the country or the empire, which, as Prince of Wales and lately as King, I have for twenty-five years tried to serve.
But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love. ...
Ever since I was Prince of Wales, and later on when I occupied the throne, I have been treated with the greatest kindness by all classes of the people wherever I have lived or journeyed throughout the empire. For that I am very grateful.
I now quit altogether public affairs and I lay down my burden. It may be some time before I return to my native land, but I shall always follow the fortunes of the British race and empire with profound interest, and if at any time in the future I can be found of service to his majesty in a private station, I shall not fail.
Unfortunately, not all historical GBCWers have been so magnanimous. Some of them have been, well, sore losers. One such sourpuss was King James II of England, who was deposed for being a bad ruler and a Catholic in the "Glorious Revolution of 1688." Never one to hold his ground, James fled the country when he heard that William of Orange was crossing the English Channel with an army. James ran first to France and then to Ireland, where he raised an Irish army and was soundly defeated by William at the Battle of the Boyne. Unwilling to accept responsibility for the failure of his cause, James laid the blame squarely at the feet of his loyal Irish soldiers in this July 1, 1690 speech:
I had a very good army in England, and when I had the greatest occasion for them, they deserted me and went to the enemy, and finding a total defection against me there, I returned and went to France, where I was kindly received by that King, and had all the assurances imaginable from him to re-establish me on my throne.
In some time after I came to this kingdom, and found my roman Catholic subjects here equipped and prepared to defend my cause as their ability could bear, and though I have often been cautioned that when it came to the touch they would never bear the brunt of a battle, I could never credit the same till this day, when having a good army and all preparations fit to engage any foreign invader, I found the fatal truth of what I had been so often precautioned, and though the army did not desert me here, as they did in England, yet when it came to a trial they basely fled the field and left the spoil to the enemies, nor could they be prevailed upon to rally, though the loss in the whole defeat was but inconsiderable; so that henceforward, I never more determine to head an Irish army, and do now resolve to shift for myself, and so gentlemen must you.
Death is a peculiar, and peculiarly final, form of GBCW. Those who have been forced to accept it throughout history have found a number of ways of facing their ultimate end. None, however, has been more eloquent than Socrates, who in Plato's Apology of Socrates is heard upbraiding with prophetic defiance the Athenians who have just pronounced capital sentence upon him (a sentence which the real Socrates famously avoided by drinking hemlock in his cell):
...O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic power. And I prophesy to you who are my murderers, that immediately after my death punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. But that will not be as you suppose: far otherwise. For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained: and as they are younger they will be more severe with you, and you will be more offended at them. For if you think that by killing men you can avoid the accuser censuring your lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter before my departure, to the judges who have condemned me.
But no matter how you cut it, no matter which historical GBCW appeals to you the most (er, least), none can match the most famous one-liner GBCW ever uttered. Dripping with sarcasm, cynicism, and resignation, the dying words of Julius Caesar (as written by William Shakespeare) are worth remembering for their brevity as well as for their acerbic wit:
Et tu, Brute?