The Winter of Our Discontent

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
. . . .

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore,--since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,--
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

-Richard III, William Shakespeare

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are."

-H. L. Mencken

Don't tread on an ant, when he's done nothing to you,
There may come a day, when an ant is treading on you.

-Antmusic, Adam Ant

It is a bright, cold day in December.  The traffic on the freeways is noticeably lighter.  People on the elevator look drawn, haggard.  They talk about wanting to put 2010 behind them.  Christmas presents fill the back seats of Japanese-manufactured, cheap sedans.  And walking though the office reveals an assortment of plates of Christmas cookies and goodies with plastic wrap and ribbons strewn beside.  Another year over, a new one begun.

Meanwhile, the municipal bond market is in collapse.  The next domino falls.  States and local municipalities will have to pay more and more of a premium to get money needed to run necessary services, and go deeper and deeper into debt, and those who least need any such services grin at new census numbers that ensure yet even more and better control on this strange, internecine and internal House divided against itself.  It is the drowning of "government" in the bathtub.  Someone ran off with the money in the deregulation frenzy, and they continue doing so.  They are bilking the national coffers, the money supply, and, most of all, nobodies like you.

But nowhere in the brightly illuminated telepersons on Faux News is any of this evident.  Next up, how "liberals" are spending too much of "your" money.  The "government" that they are bilking is taking too much of "your" money.  The enemy within is the intelligentsia.  Ah, the enslaved nod and obey.  From between teeth that are bleached too white, and makeup that is smeared on deceptively smoothe, through eyes that reflect the television lighting's glare, the lies are being told.  Ignorance is Strength.

But which is it, this government?  Is it the old and dilapidated buildings huddled around a quiet and cold marsh on the shores of the Potomac?  No, not any longer.  Now, it is elsewhere.  It speaks to you from the media of screamfests on cable television shows and chainsaw voices on AM radio peddling gold and free, misguided and sideways anger.  Those who govern you are not the fools scurrying around the chambers in Washington.  Those are just shills who have managed to cut a better deal than you.  And, ironically, they serve as the scapegoats of those who truly govern you, manage the information your given about your own society, and direct your emotions to pervert your reason, an amygdala-hijack of your own ability to think for yourself.  And they choose as scapegoats the fools in Washington, and almost anyone who can think and feel.

So Merry Christmas.  And Happy New Year.  If you are reading this, then you are already one breath of freedom better than the cars that run endlessly along freeways, going nowhere.  You have taken the pill and are seeing how deep the rabbit hole goes. 

An Englishman bedecked in woman's makeup once quipped decades ago about these and other ants.  Just as an Englishman a millenia before him quipped about this winter, and our discontent.