The idea that, given enough freedom to make foolish decisions, one may eventually use it to one’s own detriment, is expressed in a number of different languages as having enough “rope”. In Hindi, the full quote translates as “If you give him enough rope, he will eventually reveal his true intentions”.
For us, the idiom is much the same. “Give him enough rope,” we say, “and he will eventually hang himself.” The phrase was first seen in 17th century England as “Give a fool enough rope…” but now we apply it to anyone who acts impulsively and without limit as shorthand for the expectation that it will lead to an unexpected downfall. Charlotte Bronte is credited with giving the phrase a wider use by including it in her novel, Shirley,in an argument between two characters about the behavior of the followers of the Luddite movement. The Luddites opposed the adoption of the new technology that powered the industrial revolution. They organized gangs to splinter and burn machinery in English cotton and woolen mills.
Watching the current white house resident and his ship of fools, his overstuffed clown-car, his mindless troupe of bobbleheads, taking a wrecking ball to the Constitution, the courts, the provision of good data, the troves of American history and anything else that is found by their mindless AI to contain the words “gender”, “gay” or “black”, I think about that rope. “Yep,” I am thinking, “it’s getting mighty close to enough.”
Pundits call it overreaching, but the idea is the same. The more rope they collect in order to tie us up and drag us away, the greater the likelihood that they will end up on the short end of it, either dangling from a symbolic tree, or on the losing side of the tug of war in which they are engaged with the American people. As their poll numbers plummet, it becomes increasingly obvious that every outrageous act, every lie about consequences, every freedom stolen from a targeted group of us, leads directly to more and more disillusionment with the Trump regime, all across the country.
They’ve got plenty of rope but want more. Let’s make sure they put it to good use.
The Book Censor’s Library
This week, I’ve been reading a 2023 book called The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa. Translated from the original Arabic, this dystopian novel is set in a disturbingly familiar unnamed place where books are banned by a totalitarian regime and all thought and expression is strictly controlled by the government. The protagonist has just been hired by the government’s sprawling Censorship Authority to sit all day in a busy and silent room, paging through books with hundreds of others, hunting for any thought or expression that could engender strong emotion and, even, heaven forbid, thought. It is a compelling exploration of the pernicious power of literature to make people think for themselves and to move, inevitably, to the level of questioning authority.
The censor becomes enthralled by the books he is asked to judge, beginning with Zorba The Greek, the 1946 paean to freedom, written by Nikos Kazantzakis. The censor then moves on to other great flights of the imagination: Alice in Wonderland, 1984, Pinocchio and Fahrenheit 451. He is wracked with thoughts and ideas, unable to sleep, and comes to imagine his books as having intentional and insistent wills of their own. His progression through these novels leads him to inner turmoil and, finally, to rebellion.
How scary for our current regime! How else to explain the censorship now being exercised at the Smithsonian, the Congressional Library, and in every funding decision regarding universities, libraries, social programs, and research. How can the president even sleep knowing how compelling, how ubiquitous, how stubborn, are the truths of history. How stirring are our novels and songs. How dangerous we have become to him.
Fortunately for us, for every leak they try to plug, three more open up. We share our books, our thoughts, our blogs, our jokes. We cannot be kept from knowledge. Of course, these funding cuts greatly curtail our ability to share, to develop new data, to publish. But can he possibly think we will be stopped?
Understanding the raw threat we pose, simply by creating, thinking, dancing, writing, and pushing back, we are inspired to do more and more of it, not less and less. We will live in the true, and not the false, world. Albert Einstein reminded us, “Arts and sciences are branches of the same work.” Each has its bit of truth. Now we are awake and joyful, and mad as hell. Conclusion? There is no stopping us.
