The Ship of Fools

 “The powerlessness many will feel in the face of ecological and economic chaos will unleash further collective delusions, such as fundamentalist beliefs in a god or gods who will come back to earth and save us. The Christian right provides a haven for this magical thinking.” Chris Hedges

We were warned about climate change, provided with predictions of how it would unfold once the tipping point was reached, and of course moneyed interests and their political servants ignored the warnings altogether or used all their resources to discredit them. Parts of western Europe are withering, fires blaze across France, Spain, Portugal, and yet again there’s a destructive fire burning in my home state. Key water sources like the Colorado River are drying up before our eyes. Crop yields fall, the risk or reality of famine rises along with prices for basic foodstuffs. Most Americans grumble, yawn, and order Alexa to change the channel to something less disturbing and unsettling. 

It’s happening, the cataclysm I mean, and at a moment in this country when the political system is stymied by partisan battles for power and denial of reality is the order of the day. Greed is going to do us in, greed and stupidity. The shadow cast across America by the disgraced, treasonous former president looms over everything, obscuring whatever light we can muster. 

I take a walk up Garcia Road, along APS, and down Jimeno. I notice that several homes are for sale, while at least three are undergoing renovation. This is big money territory and I still can’t for the life of me understand how people crack the nut. Mortgage, insurance, upkeep, taxes -- how do they pull it off, where does their money come from? I recall that even as a child I distrusted wealthy people, never felt comfortable around them or their privileged offspring. My dad, who was working-class to his marrow, and leaned toward money making by gambling on cards, horses, football, and even for a time was a cog in a low-level bookmaking operation, told me once that money was the ticket to doing whatever you want, whenever you want. By the age of 57 he was dead, a casualty of alcohol and cigarettes; he left nothing but an old Oldsmobile and some clothes. I sometimes wonder what kind of grandfather he might have been. 

As I walk down the hill, the ocean moving in and out of my view, my thoughts return to the mysterious hold Donald J. Trump has over millions of Americans. The hold makes even less sense to me now than it did in 2015 because Trump proved to be incompetent in office, a stone criminal who disqualified himself from seeking and holding any position of public trust ever again. Something in this country is completely out of whack -- a sense of shame is missing. Any president who tried to mount a coup against the government should be forced by public condemnation into exile, never to be seen or heard from again, stripped of all privileges. But not here, not with Trump. What happened to us? Have we always been so dim-witted and cruel, such easy prey for a loud-mouthed con artist who can barely read? Is it any surprise that clowns like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have risen from the muck, all of them raised on reality television, Jersey Shore comes to Washington? Decorum, ethics, rule of law, when these ideals are eroded by a steady stream of corruption, what remains is the law of the jungle, of raw power, coercive and unjust and arbitrary. 

It’s somehow appropriate that one of the books I’m reading now is The Confidence Man by Herman Melville. “You flock of fools, under this captain of fools, in this ship of fools.”