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The death of satire

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Let’s invent a fictional character. Let’s give him a name, say, Tod Croz, and then let’s make him a United States senator.

Let’s say his father, born in a foreign country, entered the US through Canada with his American wife and 4-year-old Tod, who had been born in Canada.

Let’s say that in spite of that background Tod fiercely opposes foreign immigration to the US.

Oh, and let’s throw in a part about Tod once shutting down the entire US government in a failed attempt to keep a bill providing medical insurance to everybody in the country from becoming law.

Just to make things clear, let’s have him thoroughly despised in the government he’s a part of, even by members of his own party. Let’s have one of his colleagues say that no one would be convicted if they murdered Tod in the senate.

Then let’s say that not long ago, Tod ran for president, and his opponent belittled, bullied and slandered him, and called his wife ugly to boot. Just for fun, let’s also say that his opponent accused Tod’s father of being complicit in the assassination of a sitting US president. In spite of all that, since his opponent’s subsequent election Tod has been his staunchest supporter, some would say acolyte. In fact, Tod is one of the most vocal supporters of the enormous lie that election fraud cost his erstwhile opponent the most recent election, and even is seen urging a mob to storm the very chambers where he and his fellow senators are soon to meet.

Oh, and a deadly plague has descended on the country, and Tod spends his time not only opposing, but ridiculing any attempts to deal with the plague based on scientific evidence.

Then –stay with me here– Tod’s home state suffers a terrible natural disaster in the middle of the grinding plague, and instead of using his powerful position to help, he decides to go off to a sunny beach in Mexico.

This, understandably, causes a huge uproar, and Tod rushes back, claiming the whole thing was the idea of his pre-teen daughters, so he can’t be held accountable for it.

However, our character is still seriously considering another run for the presidency, and his party sees nothing wrong with that.

Well, what do you think? Is this character believable? Should I go with him in my new novel?

From the jottings of John H. Watson, MD

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It was October of 1896, a particularly cool autumn, although by no means unpleasant. I had been reading in my chair in our digs in Baker Street, and I confess I was about to doze off, when Holmes burst in in uncommon agitation.
”Come, Watson!” he cried, “The gay Miss Afutte!”
Startled from my slumber, I could make no sense of this outburst.
“Whatever do you mean?” I demanded.
“Miss Olivia Afutte, the most celebrated ingénue of the season, is to be present at a ball given by the honorable Milton Gladbum,” he replied, “and we just have time to get there.”
I was astonished. Holmes had never before expressed the slightest interest in society, indeed he often professed disdain for the triviality of it.
“Aloysius Mentry, the barrister, will always be found where Miss Afutte consents to appear,” he explained, no doubt seeing my confusion. “I need him.”
As no further explanation appeared to be forthcoming, I roused myself and put on a jacket.
“Hand me my lozenges, will you, Watson?” said Holmes
“Lozenges? What lozenges?”
“You know, my menthols, Watson,” said he.
Outside, Holmes hailed a hansom cab, and we were on our way. As it was some distance to the home of Mr. Mentry, I ventured a question.
“Why, exactly,” I asked, “do you need the good barrister?”
“To get access to his daughter.”
“And who is she?”
“Ella Mentry, my dear Watson. Ella Mentry.”

My dear young people

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It seems we Boomers will most likely be the last generation to live out their lives in a relatively comfortable habitat.

Nothing personal. We did it all for greed and convenience. Mostly convenience; nothing galls us more than having to move when we’ve settled in. Truth to tell, we didn’t even think very much about the consequences, except now, toward the end, when it’s no doubt too late. Even now, we expend far more of our energy shifting the blame to someone else than trying to fix things.

But don’t give us all the credit; we didn’t pull this off on our own. To paraphrase Isaac Newton, if we have destroyed more than others, it was only because we were standing on the shoulders of past generations. Even the earliest farmers, whom we find so idyllic in our post-modern romanticism, advanced by slash-and-burn, with a good dash of never-look-back thrown in at the end. Where humanity is concerned, it seems a kind of fever descends upon us at the first glint of personal advantage. Nothing can stop us. Not empathy, not self-interest, not religion or science. We easily slip in and out of all those noble sentiments we build our castles on.

On second thought, that’s not fair. We do not cast aside our values. We twist them around until they are only recognizable to ourselves, until they not only do not stand in the way of our acquisitiveness, but outright demand it.

You are understandably upset. We’re like the bigger kids who stole your lunch, then ate it right in front of you while your stomach growled. I do see that. But what you don’t understand is that you would have done the same, because you are made of us, you are us, spit and image. In fact, in the coming crisis, you will do the same. It has already begun. Our current president, Donald Trump, is, I grudgingly confess, one of us, but look at those faces at his hate fests; people of all generations are there, yours included. Their faces reflect the whole range of emotions from greed to anger to fear and back again.  They’re like a mighty mirror, too bright to look at for long, too huge to ignore.

In the end, though, it comes down to this. We have made a proper hash of things, as blind as God himself to the consequences.

We are so sorry. But we have to go now. There’s money to be made of the carnage.

Technology: who needs it?

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First of all, let me say straight out that I am against all these new fangled ‘improvements’ on things that were working just fine.  Remember the old adage, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?’  It seems we have long since forgotten it, in our haste to make things easier and more productive.  We may gain a second or two, or reduce energy expenditure by a point or two, or allow more people access to some particular process or commodity, but at what price?  Do we really gain anything if we have to sacrifice ancient wisdom and tradition to get it?  Or give up our long-held values, our ways of testing the worth of ourselves and our families to ‘spread the wealth?’  Whatever happened to the concept of  earning wealth?

Take, for example, the bow and arrow.  Easy as pie.  You just pick it up, insert an arrow, pull the string, and point it, and presto!  you’ve killed something.  What could be easier? Anybody can do it.

And that’s the problem.  With a spear, you had to have some skill.  You had to calculate the distance to the animal you were hunting, figure the arc to make the spear end up at the level you wanted to strike the animal at, or at which you wanted to strike .. oh, never mind.  And not only that, you had to have some strength.  It was bad enough when they came up with the atlatl (is that a dumb name or what?)  Now, with the bow and arrow, all the strength you need is to pick the damned thing up, put in the arrow, and point it at something.  Is that the kind of man we want to encourage?  Is that who’s going to get us out of a jam when we’re attacked by enormous beasts?  Or when someone makes a really stupid comment around the fire?

I will just ask you this and leave it at that: when you’ve stolen something or insulted someone, who do you want at your side, a spearman or a ‘bowman?’

Commodiana

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Lately, I’ve seen a number of editorial comments comparing Trump to the Roman emperor Nero.  This is an outrage.  Nero was marginally competent as an emperor.

If you want a Roman comparison, try Commodus, who renamed Rome Commodiana to honor his divine self.

Like Trump, he was born filthy rich, the son of the otherwise commendable Marcus Aurelius, who elevated him to the rank of co-emperor at the age of 15.  Then Marcus had the gall to up and die three years later, leaving his son sole emperor of Rome at the age of 18.

It is extremely unfair to say that Commodus was unfit to be emperor because he had the mind of an 18-year old.  He had never really gotten past the 12-year old stage.  That was when he had been named consul of Rome, effectively ending any developmental progress.  Here he is, apparently wearing his birthday cake on his head:

By Lgtrapp – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18496675

Note the uncanny resemblance to Trump’s alleged hair.

One Roman historian, Dio Cassius, tells us that Commodus ruined Rome, turning it from a kingdom of gold to one of “iron and rust.”  He did this by completely ignoring his imperial duties and spending his time glorifying himself, including changing the names of the months to reflect the twelve names he had acquired while emperor.  Fortunately, none of it stuck.

Although ‘Commodiana’ has a certain, er, ring to it.  For future reference, in case America continues it’s death spiral.

In the end, Commodus was strangled in his bath by his favorite wrestling partner.  Now we know why Trump fired Bannon.