Una llovizna fina, una
claridad que se cola
por las rendijas de las nubes:
y la mañana vacila en el umbral,
el día que teme nacer --
And I, I am fine, thanks for asking! Though I am in some political despair: I loathe the politics of personality, and the perennial inability of Americans to grasp that no one is going to save them from themselves. They long for a king, and sooner or later they'll get one. I hope they like it.
Well, I reckon democracy was about played out anyway: it's not well-suited to large diverse populations, and our version never got its experimental kinks worked out before it took on a larger load that it could bear. Data and surveillance were due to change it all anyway. I know all this, and I know that it is not hard to manipulate people, once you have the strings in your hands.
For a' that, and a' that, a man's a man for a' that --
Well, yes, but what's a man? a leaf blowing in the wind, a trout snapping at a fly, a dog rolling with its paws in the air, hoping for a treat.
Enough: no one asked me, anyway. There are amusements enough down here in the servants' hall, and as long as no one objects to me sneaking a book from our masters' library from time to time, I'm content. What for do I want to lay down laws for my fellow trout? I owe them nothing, and they owe me nothing. Even steven. Call it a draw, and go for a long walk of a Tuesday.
1 comment:
When I was about 12, my father explained politics to me using ancient Greek and Roman history. Basically and without using the terms yin and yang (he never heard of them), he said, it's a constant change of the two things, democracy and tyranny with a few stages in between. People want democracy when they have suffered under a tyrant and once they achieved it, they eventually get bored or scared or angry with this democracy and open the path for the next tyrant. And so on.
I remember the disbelief when the people in the US actually voted for Reagan, a 2nd rate Hollywood actor with a strong thing for astrology. But I was living on a Hippie farm in the sticks of the pleasant English home counties and we thought we had the answer to all the questions. Anyway, we were certain that Reagan would bring about the end of the world with nuclear war and now look at us!
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