I’ve just returned from a travel break and, of course, it’s tough to disconnect these days, even if your trip is to the moon. So…like you, I’ve been In Touch With The News, which is becoming more and more disconnected from anything we used to think of as reality. It’s as though we are all lost in a confusing and topsy-turvy tale like Alice’s, especially the sections describing her interactions with The Queen of Hearts, a character of violent passions, driven by unthinking and wide-ranging fury.
The Perfect Metaphor
It’s not very often that an action presents a truly perfect metaphor for a much larger situation, but, this week, it did. The current oval office resident took a wrecking ball to our White House. Or, actually, a swarm of huge, insect-like backhoes. The East Wing is now rubble.
Former First Lady Betty Ford opined, back in the mid-70s, “If the West Wing is the mind of the nation, then the East Wing is its heart.”
For more than 100 years, the East Wing has housed the offices of our country’s First Ladies. Each, in their time, did their best to bring humanity to our nation’s most powerful House, working to help those addicted to alcohol or drugs, increasing literacy, or beautifying and preserving the White House, itself. Or, as in Eleanor Roosevelt’s case, standing as a strong champion for human rights at home and around the world.
The East Wing also served the White House as a safety bunker in times of danger, a deep, protective well for the leaders of the country, so that the government could go on, no matter what.
All, apparently, anathema to this current wrecking crew.
Number One: it’s easy to destroy the official office of a First Lady if you don’t really have one who gives a damn about anything useful. (Unless you count “Elonia” Musk, who filled the role for a while as a helpmate to Dr. Destructo).
Number Two: destruction of the East Wing also perfectly encapsulates the destruction (or complete absence) of kindness, love, protection, and anything that might hint at the presence of a heart in this administration. We don’t need that spongy organ! We just need to dance! Dance, all of you, even if it is a dance with the devil. A whirling dervish of cruel activity.
That 300 million dollar pitiful bid for making Trump think he looks like royalty will undoubtedly be the site of endless dancing to his hellish tune. Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue. Think Zombie Apocolypse meets the 1518 Strasbourg Dancing Plague.
In my favorite trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, when our brave hero, Frodo, facing a long and daunting attempt to vanquish a powerful evil, says, “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” Gandalf replies, “So do I, and so do all who live in such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
I take heart in seeing the faux king president losing more support every day. But I know that, so long as he and his toadies hold the reins of power, we may need to put ourselves more seriously on the line to stop him. American Revolution Two anybody?
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