Rick joins Newt, Herman, Governor Perry, Donald in ‘loose lips’ sink one’s own ship. As my dearest dear old Navy surrogate dad, aged 96 and with clear as gin mind used to say: “His battleship mouth sunk his rowboat ass.”
And there lies the denouement of the would be contendahs, who over and over became utterly seduced by and their usually clear wits overwhelmed with the applause and cheering over a pretty turn of phrase… and thus began playing to limited steerage, instead of keeping their mind on the summoning and gathering of the most number of constituents into the biggest voting block and able bodied ship possible.
But that takes skill in keeping one’s mind on the sextant, and shoulder to the wheel instead joining in the superfluous party on deck. It takes speaking of the deeper currents and not the ornaments of the ship., the vision that is winning, instead of piques of ‘like and dont like’ this and that which are minor and without gravity. No big wheel turning, no Proud Mary a burning. Just flatline interest, then as we say on the Great Lakes where I grew up… “still water, no wind.”
Playing to the limited audience for the cheers, is not politics. It’s abandoning one’s visionary post. Have to hand it though, to many in the Republican voter’s block who surge at first toward those who seem promising, but when the larger blocks see their favored at the moment candidate would rather drink little umbrella drinks with the guests, than guide the ship in the night and through storms, the voter blocks have wisely withdrawn, and chosen instead to fall back for those who are not easily flattered, who have workmanship views, who are human and filled with humor, but are not carried off by the false winds of fama…
This pull of the seduction of fama in ancient mythos, is the pull of ego that overwhelms one’s better senses and plans, and instead of laying out one’s vision, instead watches the focus groups to follow what they say they want… so that the leader is no longer a leader, but rather a follower who depends on others personal quirks to guide him in ways that turn out to lay out a petty platform instead of one of magnitude.
This pull of seduction to start acting cute on stage and faux warrior and blurting unthought out and inadvisable things… is why Odysseus ordered himself tied to the mast of his ship and bid his sailors to plug their ears with beeswax in order to safely come past the isle of Anthemoessa where the Sirens lived … and who were said to call out and sing so appealingly that men would lose their wits and go mad and jump into the sea and swim to the bone white island of the Sirens… realizing too late that the reason the island was so white was because the bones of other sailers who had entered the fatuous, had drowned before reaching shore alive… and their bones washed up year after year after year.
It is not just an ancient myth. It is a modern one still. And the sirens are not only women –or men– in real life who could distract, but also the ‘song of applause and adulation” even more so is the siren that can make a person mad, make them lose focus, fall into the sea, squandering all maps and advantages, winding up with nought, bringing nought, helping nought.
There ought to be a dirge, just for such souls who became so waylaid by trivia and pomp when they could have plowed the sea lanes in fresh new ways. Instead of Volga Boatmen, maybe Vote-failing Boatmen. And I say it with no schaudenfreud. I think our system is as strong as the opposing parties are in statesmanship and vision. The petty tapdances in the ballrooms dont meet the bar. Some who were promising stopped off far too often at Anthemoessa, never to return.