Revenge of the Jabberwock

  `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!" He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back. "And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

JABBERWOCKY by Lewis Carroll (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872) 

No rational person knows what Lewis Carrol was saying in this famous poem.  Only we who are addicted to politics and the denizens of the District of Columbia and other political "gulags" claim to understand it. 

This is because politics through the ages has been for the most part, more insane than sane, more sordid than sublime, more shameless than inspirational and more cynical than altruistic.  The moments when "homo politicus"rises to levels which transforms the business of politics to the art of politics or to that which has clarity, occur, but seem few and far between.

 

The current age seems intent on surpassing the worse days of the Roman Republic.  Washington is the epicenter where all the clutter and detritus of an ego driven society rules us from an alternative universe.  Here sometimes decent men and women enter for good reasons and then rarely leave, usually for bad reasons. 

The inter-net/social media/24/7/365 news cycle age  has spawned an era of information overload where the trite, the important, the ominous and the decadent have been blended into a witches brew of impressions that leave no impression on many of us except what the lords of information want to imprint on our minds and our emotions. 

We are drowning in a sea of distractions...an ocean of moral and political relativism where everything is designed to be as important as everything else. 

President Obama has recently called the scandals of "Fast and Furious" where people died, Benghazi...where people died, the IRS in all it's wicked manifestations, the AP/Fox News abridgement of the First Amendment, the NSA with its frightening Fourth Amendment implications, the breakdown of vital services for our Veterans through incompetence or worse, the ongoing disintegration of "Obamacare" which threatens both  the economic and physical health of most of America, Solyndra and its numerous boondoggle relatives and more ...as phoney scandals.

 

It is though he believes by issuing this pronouncement he can make these situations go away by granting political absolution to the  villains behind them.  He did this in order to once again "pivot"to the economy with a series of deja vu speeches  intended to drum up class resentment toward the rich on behalf of the poor and middle class or soon to be poor. 

Obama decries the growing disparity of income between the wealthy and everyone else and declares it the central issue of the day while ignoring and failing to mention that all of this inequality occurred on his watch.  Worse, he goes off on yet another vacation at a $7.46 million mansion designed for the rich and famous leaving his disingenuous message mangled and lost in the contrails of Air force One.  

The people harmed by these "phoney" scandals he proclaims seem not to be of concern to a man who has become the lamest of ducks when in normal political time it should  not yet be "duck" season. 

Obama sees the pie called the economy as finite.  He seems oblivious to the fact that it is possible metaphorically " to bake a larger pie'.  Growing the economy would necessitate a recognition of capitalism,  I suppose! 

Today four out of five Americans face joblessness, welfare and/or near poverty in their lifetimes due to the redistribution policies of this President who has kept the economy stagnant for five long years and he is still not done with destroying us by making most of us the mere subjects of the Nanny state.  The fact is that his policies have benefited the rich more than anyone else .  This means he has actually grown his own target for the war he has chosen to wage between Americans.  Combine all of this with the backdrop of  "ginned up" racial tensions and it makes rational, sober people want to run screaming from him and D.C. into the night.  Ronald Reagan once said   “Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”  

The ever obsequious press of which we have commented on more than a few times in the past, are also in issue overload.   To many of them the sexual proclivities of politicians, the latest trivia about the Kardashians or Beyonce and Jay Z and the "celebritization" of the culture is all of equal import with the earthly manifestations of the  Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and all they symbolize.  Even peace is left out of their equations since peace is good news and good news is no news and no news is the only sin they still believe in. 

The politics of "Modernity" are irrational, confusing and distracting only if we let them be.  Remember they had to drain a swamp to build Washington City.  Today many would like to drain D.C. to create a swamp where at least the ecology would be understandable to us and we would  all have a fighting chance of taking our vorpal swords in hand and spurning the" frumious bandersnatch" !

 

ERLANDSSON