American Fez

Ship Wreck

Whenever reference is made to Plato's political allegory of the Ship of Fools, I always recall Roy Schneider's famous quip in Jaws: "You're going to need a bigger boat," because God knows there are far too many fools already. 

But to my dismay, our modern systems of governance has provided a bigger boat, one much larger than any luxury ocean liner currently at sea. Observe this monstrous vessel steaming into every port to unleash its blundering rabble of useful idiots upon a previously quiet and serene way of life. They may introduce themselves to the locals as senators and presidents but in truth they are are nothing but rapacious tourists with a bucket list.  Atop that list is an unquenchable compulsion to wreck everything they see, then take selfies with tour guide Ozymandias standing among the ruins. These are the souvenirs shown to the folks back home on Capitol Hill: a slide show of the shit show that is the Ship of Fools cruising around the world.

Considering it only stays afloat thanks to a combination of hot air platitudes and constant bailing, there's a good chance the Ship of Fools will sink beneath unforgiving waves of popular apathy before too long, or even be smashed to pieces by some anarchic Kraken. But I know its ominous sails will once more darken our horizon at election time, the supercilious and self-interested crew demanding our galley-slave votes and press-ganging us into the polling booths. So ahoy there, ship mates, gather your compass and charts and prepare for another rough passage. 

Go Ask Your Mother

The child is father to the man, according to William Wordsworth. But I'm not so sure. In fact, if you ask me, the child is more like the stepfather of the man, or perhaps the eccentric uncle of the man, who the child scarcely sees once or twice a year. After all, the lives of most men amount to little more than a shadow of their infant plans, so somewhere along the path to maturity the auto-parenting went wrong. Apparently, the negligent child spent more time at the playground and the soda fountain than to providing adequate guidance for his successful transition to adulthood. Lucky, then, the man whose younger self even manages to remembers his own birthday. 

I passed a pre-school daycare center on my way to work this morning. There was a familiarity about the architecture of the building or maybe just a pattern in the cloudy weather that instantly recalled my own experience of such institutions: an unformed identity confronted by a table of crayons and blank paper, not really knowing where he was or what he was supposed to do, but nevertheless trusting implicitly in the fact that he was placed there at that exact time for some specific reason that made sense to somebody. Four years old, what potential this child has. Who will he turn out to be? What kind of fledgling hero stands here in embryo? How will he learn to make a worthwhile difference in the world? This recollection of pubescent potency only lasted a second before I remembered how I preferred to hide in the toy cupboard rather than make friends with the other kids or draw pictures to stick on a fridge.

Nowadays, of course, in the Age of Transgenderism, may indeed not be the father of the man. It's also possible that the female child turns out to be the father of the man, and the male child becomes the mother of the woman, and any other progenitorial combination you can assign to any individual identity. It's a very confusing situation for any person trying to figure out who was father to him or herself. Just imagine the philosophical paternity suits that unscrupulous lawyers could file if they were smart enough to take advantage. Fortunately, the unimaginative and mediocre law student is usually father to the typical attorney.