In a posthumous collection of essays, letters and notes by F. Scott Fitzgerald, titled The Crack-Up, his friend, Edmund Wilson, pulled together the author’s writings about his mental and physical breakdown in the 1930s. Fitzgerald wrote of his struggles with disillusionment and alcoholism and his growing disappointment with the failed promises and spiritual emptiness of the Jazz Age. Taken together, it may be seen as a series of thoughts about aging, a premise made clear in the first sentence: “All life is a process of breaking down.”
He also writes, as though seeing what will come as dangerous and instructive, “Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.”
Not that the white house resident has ever read one of Scott’s books, but I was thinking of a way to talk about his descent into madness and his choice to endanger all of us just to satisfy his narrow, narrow, narcissistic goals.
Hence, I say to him, “Draw your throne up close to the edge of the precipice…” And that is, predictably, exactly what he seems to be doing. From the time of King Nebuchadnezzar, philosophers and historians have written that all despots fail (though some take longer than others). In the case of Nebuchadnezzar, a voice from above warned the egoistic King of Babylon that the kingdom had departed from him and he would be forced by his people to flee his dwellings, forfeit his wealth and “eat grass like oxen”. The message was clear: those who seek to take over the world are doomed to be overtaken by their own people.
I am watching that happening here to our faux king president and pray it will continue and grow. He has already lost the vast majority of us, with more piling on each day with each new outrage. His grasp on this country, like his grasp on realty, is teetering, teetering, at the edge of the cliff. Not to mention that he is the epitome of life’s process of breaking down. He will tumble and crash.
Yes, the damage he has done will take time to repair, but we will repair it. And history will detail his many failings, and chronicle every bump on the way down. Just keep pushing that throne closer and closer to the precipice. Together we can do it. Push!
Who Watches The Watchers?
The classic philosophical question, Quis custodiet iosos custodes, translates roughly as, Who can hold those in power accountable or, colloquially, Who is watching the watchers? And, more importantly, how are they expected to do so?
In this crazy moment, we are forced to face the truth about the lack of guardrails enforcing the most important agreements in international and national policy. For no apparent reason, we have always believed that those in power will check themselves. That they will adhere to a high, if unwritten, standard of behavior. In other words, we all seemed to take it for granted that our leaders would unanimously agree to “never do that” and stick to it.
In the case of the attacks on Caracas by the US military and the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela, for instance, it becomes abundantly clear that, for decades, world leaders simply thought it in their own best interests, and agreed, in effect, not to randomly bomb and actively work to take over and change the government of another country. That is what despots hungering for world power do. It is not the act of a rational 21st century leader. In our own country, we thought we had the tool to check such a display of power by requiring that our Congress agree, and placing the actual power to go to war in their hands.
As with every other moral standard we have, in our long slumber, taken for granted, we now see that refraining from invasion and asking Congress to agree were simply two more bowling pins falling in the nightmarish strike by the souless, standardless, immoral, white house squatter. Worse, it leaves open the question of retaliation, loss of allies, permission given every other dictatorship to do the same, and the crushing of another fragile anchor of peace in our times.
And, as with every other experience this president has had, there are no consequences. So far. Even encouraging members of the military to do the right thing by refusing to carry out illegal orders will be punished with a diminution of retirement benefits, at least, and a demotion in rank, at most. Just ask Senator, veteran, astronaut, Mark Kelly.
It’s time for some consequences. That would include the mid-terms, at least, and, beyond that, everyone finally saying no. We won’t do what you command. You are a sinking ship and, even if I might have been a rat, I’m outta here. He might think he doesn’t need the support of the people of America, but he still needs their arms and legs. It’s time for Nancy Reagan Day: Just Say No – for the military, for the federal cogs in the wheel, for the enablers.
Get off the ship.
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