The Captain should go down with the ship, The ship should not go down because of the Captain.
I wake up late morning and wonder what the day will be like.
Actually, it is like every other day since March, a feeling of isolation and a never-ending wonder of what the winds of time will bring.
Albert Camus wrote that men were essentially searching for meaning in a world visiting evil upon individuals through no fault of their own, a random plague not differentiating between the virtuous or the sinner.
Men have continually searched for meaning when, perhaps there is none. Melville talked about the white whale as a metaphor for death, and as Ahab pursued his nemesis, found his own. Ishmael talked about finding meaning in every day life, a calming way toward the small pleasures, the sea, the air, the bracing wind. When Ishmael began his tale as narrator, ".... having little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world...with a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship..." Melville continues..."and still deeper that meaning of the story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned."
Ishmael, drawn into a vortex that will eventually kill all on board his ship, he being in search of adventure to distract him from a perception of a life of ennui. And by his adventurous soul, his life devolves into a catastrophe not of his own making, barely escaping with his life.
Captain Ahab, a madman, projects onto his crew his obsession; rendering an oath in blood for all his crew to pursue the whale to the ends of the earth. Ahab does not give a fig for his crew's welfare, only the mad pursuit of a white ghost that eventually slays him, together with the entire crew, save Ishmael, who lives to spin his awe-inspiring tale of narcissism, obsession and sociopathy.
I have not left my house since March, gone to a restaurant, seen friends, children, grandchildren, and crave to get on with life. Finding the little pleasurable things as Melville spoke; bits of humanity aside from the political insanity of watching a destructive Narcissus, blaming his incompetence and hubris on everyone else, taking no responsibility for five million cases of Covid 19 in the Untied States with almost 200,000 deaths and climbing. We speak not here of all the other malefactions; we have been listening to them for almost four years.
My personal relationships with Trump supporters have fled down a drain of frustration and futility, attempting to persuade people living in some other universe. Quantum mechanics physicists say that that alternate universes do exist as proven by obtuse mathematical equations, but we have just not seen the physical evidence. But wait! maybe we have. It exists in Laura Ingraham's and Sean Hannity's ability to generate advertising revenue for Rupert Murdoch, who placed an evil genius Roger Ailes, in charge of how Americans get their information. Brian Stelter's new book "Hoax," details the culture of Fox news and its climate of deception. It is a frightening tale of avarice and self-dealing, the mouthpiece for Donald Trump and his minions.
One particular friend says that the Democrats are "Marxists, Communists and constitute a mob that will ravage our cities. I cannot fathom the depths of such hatred. The recent events in Kenosha and other cities do have many complicated reasons. Black frustration with policing, white anger about looting, ginned up fears of being disarmed. Clearly if there is a mob outside, calling 911 is not the answer.
From all the crises faced by America, this is a big one, but we have seen much worse. But we all need to responsibly act to preserve our institutions, our civil discourse and our understanding. Our forbearance.
The president is squirming within an inferno of his own creation--his own voyage on the Pequod. Those who think that the best quality of a president is character are seeing more vindication for their opinions. A president, this Captain Ahab, need not be an intellectual giant. He or she must have the emotional intelligence to understand the problems of his people, not whether his hair will suffer from a trip to a cemetery on a rainy French day to visit the World War I fallen, because he fancies them as "losers and suckers" or "what was in it for them?"
