Hmmm
With apologies to T.S. Eliot, Brer Rabbit and Walt Kelly. Also fireflies.
Everything seems to be a distraction. Distractions from distractions from distractions. It is distractions all the way down. Not that all are vacuous. Kernels of importance wink in and out like fireflies. But the design is purposeful illusion. We citizens are in a theatre of the absurd. Lights flashing, sounds cascading, movement of shadows, faces contorted with suffering.
We spill the popcorn. We close our eyes. We will ourselves to sleep. This is how the world ends, claimed Eliot, or did he. Not with a bang but a whimper. Not with a whimper but a bang. All the bangs and all the whimpers as falling shrapnel.
There is a sense, if sense there be, that all in political life resembles the African-American folktale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Brer Fox seeks to trap Brer Rabbit with a figure of a baby made out of tar. Brer Rabbit irritated by the babies’ silence starts hitting and kicking and becomes “more engaged” by the minute. (Spoiler alert Brer Rabbit wins in the end.)
We get entrapped in illusion after illusion until we can’t see the light of day – or of reason, or of genuine impending danger. Does anyone think, as I do, that there is irony in the fact that at the same time Putin and Trump dance their jig in Alaska, a world conference in Europe to limit plastic production ends without agreement on any strong sanctions.
We are always fighting the good battle with one hand tied behind our back, but now we look more like the Monty Python knight who without arms and legs continues to butt his opponent.
Oh, how the mighty cry foul. When you box with shadows you swing wildly, are likely to hit yourself. You are the only reality in the room.
I once taught that political narrative began as bedtime stories. Always heros and always monsters and always frightened children who should never venture far from home. We seem still, as adults, to have a taste for these stories. Seen a Marvel film lately? And as each Presidential election gets nearer, so do the monsters and so the hope for rescue.
Ah, Pogo, I know we have met the enemy and it is ourselves, but also, friend Possum, it is ourselves in boardrooms and onboard yachts. It is ourselves still unsatisfied with the rewards of greed. It is ourselves with a gun locked in the closet. It is ourselves unwilling to let museums reflect history and universities teach unvarnished truth. It is ourselves fighting the battles of today with toy swords and diplomatic graces.
Now that I have had that say. Have interrupted this Sunday’s harmony with virtually a second post. (I sweated a bit on the American Dream piece and missed my self-imposed Wednesday deadline.) Let me say in apology that of course this is exaggeration. We live, as we all know, in a world of serious people doing their best with difficult problems. And of course we wish them success.