A Little Fable, by Franz Kafka
"Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.
The inevitablility of a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton succession looms over us like the Cloverfield monster, roaring and smashing things in a fury that will only end with it worrying us in its toothy maw and spitting us back out again. Seeing the same dirty tricks, media love fest, and conservative apoplexy once more is discouraging.
Of course, nothing in politics is inevitable, and the Clintons' lust for power and self-promotion may well do them in. But I believe it is important take precautionary measures to repudiate the grim, nihilistic view typified in Kafka's "Little Fable". We have seen how that plays out on the other side of the aisle as Bush Derangement Syndrome: the rage and despair that leads to a kind of societal psychotic break with reality. I will work and advocate for a presidential candidate that can make this country a better place, and support whoever is elected as my president. Partisanship in the service of concrete ideals and substantive moral battles is a God-given right, but it's time to re-evaluate Arthur Vandenberg's wise words:
'To me "bipartisan foreign policy" means a mutual effort, under our indispensable two-Party system, to unite our official voice at the water’s edge so that America speaks with maximum authority against those who would divide and conquer us and the free world.'
That's a much better quote to end with than Kafka.
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