Sailing To Oblivium: July 8, 2017

He looked at me, frowned, and said, “Mr. Jimmie, if y’all don’t straighten out, the Lord’s gonna quit blessing you white folks.” That made me stop and think.

It was in response to some whimpering complaint about a burden I felt at the time. I can’t remember now if it, the burden, was real or imaginary. The speaker was, though. He was a man who lived next to us and whom I had known my whole life. His name was Amos Fletcher. I’m sure his grandparents had been born slaves.

At any rate, I think of his admonition a lot. It never fails to bring to mind, as well, the verse, currently much out of fashion, from the 12^th Chapter, 48^th verse of the Gospel According to Luke in the Christian New Testament: “to whom much is given, much will be required.”

Today, we’ve turned that one around, haven’t we? In the next version, I’m sure it will be corrected to read, “to whom much is given, more will be given until all is given, and even that will prove wanting of justice.”

For the time being, we’ll just use the “taken out of context” ruse. It seems that every time the Galilean steps on someone’s toes, he is accused of out-of-contextedness, Is that a word? Well it should be. We can pretend it is anyway.

We have looked at two of the world’s great philosophers, Amos Fletcher and the Galilean, now let us visit a third, Jonathon Swift. I don’t think we could contemplate our current set of political leaders without thinking of a species encountered in the classic Gulliver’s Travels. I’m speaking of course of the Yahoos. Swift describes them as noxious, hairy creatures and adds,  

“They're endlessly greedy: they kill each other over a certain shiny rock found in Houyhnhnm Land (which, beyond being shiny, has no value). And even if there are only 5 Yahoos supplied with enough meat to fill 50, they will still attack each other for control of these supplies.”

Houyhnhnms, on the other hand, are a breed of intelligent horses who, in Swift’s mind, represent the most noble of creatures. He says of them,

: "… the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they posses, than I should be for not wanting a leg or an arm, which no man in this wits would boast of, although he must be miserable without them.”

For now, perhaps it is time to think about where we Americans stand in the great river of history. As we exercise our precious privilege of being able to vote for our leaders, will we choose Yahoos or Houyhnhnms?

If we choose poorly, will our blessings disappear?