I Am Ahab: August 2008

Monday, July 14, 2008

Bastille Day. Strangely, not a big holiday in prisons, this date on which French revolutionaries stormed the Bastille, set free its prisoners, and began the transformation of the country from monarchy to republic. The change didn’t work out as well for the aristocrats (corrupt and otherwise) who had maintained the status quo.

This in a country of which Viking raider Ragnar Lothbrok, only a few centuries previously, purportedly remarked, “Never had I seen lands so fertile and so rich, nor ever a people so cowardly.”

In a time when our political leadership has failed us, when our system of checks and balances has been forsaken, when our government, at all levels, has become an instrument of corruption in service of the powerful, we are left with the same choice faced by those French revolutionaries, and by our own founding fathers before them.

The choice between cowardice in service of the status quo, or courage enough to face the uncertainty inherent in revolutionary change. And to hold accountable despots who abuse the public trust, at all levels of government.

“I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.”—Billings Learned Hand (U.S. judge 1872-1961)

Thursday, July 17, 2008

“Hey. Big Todd. You want some that frif-frif-frif?” “LC” had come by my cell, and was selling the lollipops that guys occasionally make by shaping and microwaving together a couple of flavors of the taffy that’s available on canteen, around a Q-tip denuded of its cotton ends. “LC” has invented a collection of terms like “frif,” “gurst,” “zooter,” and the like, each of which has multiple meanings but none of which can be used interchangeably. Somehow this works as a means of communications, though it lends conversations with him a Dr. Seuss-like quality.

The price of the frif in question was a stamp or a token. I inquired as the whether the confectioner had a preference. “A token is cool.” In exchange I was given a flawlessly circular lollipop of green and orange halves, neatly wrapped in plastic. It works surprisingly well as hard candy; although, after sitting in the mouth for a while warming up, its consistency starts to return to that of taffy. Sticky on the teeth.

The novelty of the thing is the key. And in this absurdity of constrained opportunity, the novelty of the lollipop was positively subversive. A Cat-in-the-Hat style frif.

“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”—Robert Heinlein, Logic of Empire

Sitting in my cave, thinking about my own experience, about the human condition generally, I’ve formulated a thesis that the state of the world, so far as its deficiencies, can be attributed as follows:

80% Incompetence
20% Malice

This formulation allows me to see the humanity of those people who contribute to the many injustices that populate our world. In the midst of lies, and corruption, and the kind of ambition that is indifferent to truth; however, incompetence ranks as a pretty ragged excuse.

“‘I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think ye may be mistaken.’ I should like to have that written over the portals of every church, every school, and every court house, and, may I say, of every legislative body in the United States. I should like to have every court begin,‘I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that we may be mistaken.”—Billings Learned Hand