Gadflying

One size does not fit all.

Total freedom for the wolf is, after all,

very apt to be death to the lamb.

Man’s timeless truths are fashioned

from necessity and for the nonce,

panta rhea*,

are changed as whim or experience dictates.

Utopias are all, I think, solo universes,

satisfying to their creators

and no other.

In the end, humanity’s goal, perhaps,

can only be to prevent border conflicts

between them,

to avoid causing or enduring

extremes of suffering.

The clash of values in mankind,

or in a single human breast,

does not mean of necessity

that some are true and others false.

A certain humility in such matters is wise.

In the end, each of us must mind

tenderly and vigilantly

the conscience which is his own.

There is no license granted

to babysit another’s soul.

© Xristi Megas 2003-2005

*  From Heraclitus.  Everything flows.

The phalanx mentality of the current Administration and its supporters in Congress is hugely depressing to me, as are their efforts to homogenize society into compliant, obedient, credulous offspring of the Stepford Wives.  The assault on PBS and NPR is particularly upsetting.  Public broadcasting is guilty of nothing more than providing a forum for opinions which differ from those of Mr. Bush and his devoted followers.  Mainly overlooked in the attacks is that the Administration’s spokespersons have had no difficulty getting slots on PBS and NPR but have shown an unusual degree of modest reticence to take advantage of them.  Mr. Bush’s greatest skills do not include extemporaneous speech, and certainly he and his supporters prefer the friendly audience they can assure when they pre-vet (and to some extent pre-script) their town halls and community gatherings.  And when they so frequently sail close to the wind in dealing with the truth, I suppose being extremely careful in utterance is necessary.  The President has acknowledged at a recent press conference, speaking about his proposal for Social Security:  “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”  I suspect that was an ad lib; it’s hard to believe a speech writer would have permitted so open an admission that the President views the truth and propaganda as interchangeable terms – especially after the revelations that the Administration had paid some newscasters to pass off scripted “infomercials” as news coverage.

So, yes, I can see the Administration might be made nervous by interviewers on public broadcasting who are bright, articulate, fair-minded but not indoctrinated in Bushiness.  I’m a fan of Jim Lehrer’s News Hour, which brings all flavors of political and economic thinking to the table – usually the opponents (and the term is appropriate, for their views are frequently very far apart and somewhat antipathetic to each other) behave politely, but I have seen faces redden and jaws tighten.  It does take a certain courage to appear.  Perhaps public response to the President’s petulant performance in his first “big” TV appearance in the first debate in the election campaign has made him timorous.  And if the President is timorous, his minions take care of the problem.  Such a one is Kenneth Tomlinson – who at least is readily identifiable for what he is, a man with strong GOP and pro-Bush leanings and an evangelical zeal to spread them.  He scarcely makes any attempt to conceal that.  He is, of course, a mental mediocrity and a moral one, as well.  However, he has so much company in both parties that it’s scarcely a distinguishing characteristic. 

I am almost as much amused as terrified by the proposed expansion of the Patriot Act to include wide-ranging powers to check library habits.  I had always believed that reading about all positions and all thinking on every topic was how a rational person gathered information on which to reach his own conclusions and develop his own philosophy.  After all, how could I know that I so thoroughly despised Mein Kampf or had so many problems with the logic of the Communist Manifesto or so much admired the poetry and message of the Qur’an  (like the Christian Bible, of course, it has some ideas entirely too easily twisted into hatefulness—and both Islam and Christian extremists do so with reliable regularity), that one can depend on outgrowing Nietzsche by 25 unless one has severe mental problems, that Ovid’s Latin is more pleasurable to read though Virgil’s is more powerful, etc., etc., etc.,  if I had never read them?  Similarly, I subscribe to any number of GOP newsletters and alert systems.  If I don’t know their positions, how can I know whether I agree or disagree?  And if I disagree, isn’t it wise to have an idea what they’re up to?  I worry that the Patriot Act will stifle that kind of free-ranging inquiry and investigation on the part of the citizenry – troublesome, because democracy depends upon an informed citizenry.  While we are fighting in
Iraq, the nation that did NOT attack us, on the premise that they had WMD which didn’t exist, I’d say we’ve been a bit shy on the information side of late.  Doing anything further to suppress its acquisition seems to me a very bad idea.

And even if a convincing case could be made that snooping into library records somehow enabled us to identify prospective terrorists (and I don’t think such a case can be made), it would not explain the extent to which the Administration goes to stifle alternate points of view even within its own party and the levels of vilification to which it is willing to descend to discredit those points of view, nor its merciless behavior to the other party.  It is ceasing to be true that “that’s what makes horse-racing”.  The only permissible winner in the race, Mr. Bush appears to believe, is not a horse, but an elephant, and it’s HIS elephant, distinguishable by its caparison displaying the St. George’s cross of the Crusaders. 

His is not a mind I admire.  His is not a character I admire.  His piety is of a more public and smarmy kind than I find attractive.  That he should continue to be what he is, is certainly his right, and I have no wish to interfere with it (though I will be relieved when his Presidency is at an end because I believe he is not much wedded to the idea of truthfulness).  But I do wish that he and his myrmidons and followers, political and religious, felt as strongly that I have the right to be what I am and had no interest in altering it.

I am, after all, as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog, an adorable person.