Sometimes, we take our patriotism too far. Just the other day, I was wandering lonely as a kite that flies on high over Wella Beach, when I spotted a national flag fluttering and dancing in the breeze – At the exposed business end of a half-submerged wreck just offshore! Cute idea… But it could be another sad case of arrested development – Depending on what else our anonymous pennant-hoister gets up to in his or her spare time.
For as can be increasingly seen, the lamentable reality is that our half-masted, partially sunken, rotting-hulked patriotism is often the last refuge of a new breed of scoundrels. Yes, dear, I know: not the nicest topic for a quiet read right now – But when the state of the nation is such that there is no honour among ex-colleagues in combat, you know we are sailing in choppy seas, and there is something more rotten than the wreck of that empty vessel off Kinross.
Speaking of empty vessels, you will find that bullies make the loudest noise. Let us not burden you with the traumatic memories of kindergarten abuse, but permit us to point out that too many people throwing their weight around these days have simply not grown up. Bad manners is the least of their problems. The most pressing concern is their apparent double-minded nature. Not for them the singular purpose and passion of the type of tyrant that history has made more palatable to us: Nebuchadnezzar, Napoleon, Queen Victoria.
No, our present-day petty despots just can’t make up their minds sometimes (which is not good for them). But when they do, it’s often bad news for some poor, innocent bloke who was merely minding his Ps and Qs as he fretted and strutted his hour upon the stage. Plotting a coup, planning an election victory, and pursuing the assassination of more than his main opponent’s character. Perhaps I should have said allegedly plotting and planning? There’s no proof, after all. And it is only the suspicion that our man in – where is he, by the way? – hot water was sailing perilously close to the reef of treason and the rocks of unpatriotism that had him keel-hauled off to the-Navy-we-are-told-knows-where.
But we’re drifting a bit off course. We were discussing the double-minded nature of small-time crooks and gangsters in the guise of civil servants, weren’t we? Take for instance the thinking at one time in certain quarters that a general is a general. That is, except when he is an ex-general – in which case, he is now a civilian.
But because he is no ordinary civilian but a political contender, his ex-general status makes him liable for persecution – er, prosecution – under military law. But now that he is not generally an asset in war or peace, there is no need to pretend that he was once a comrade-in-arms. In fact, his track record makes it expedient for us to treat him in an uncivil fashion. Not only his track record, but his threat to expose who the real bullies on a large scale were. And his taunts to the bully boys that his alleged criminality was a red herring. These made it prudent for the big fishermen to reel in the badly-behaved barracuda. But the vacillating character of those who misguide the ship of state seems to hang around all our necks like a nuisance of an albatross. Is the general a soldier or a civilian? You can’t have your fishcake and eat it.
Another example of arrested development is the wishful thinking (we use the term nautically) that dominates the ‘offence establishment’ these days… You know, the division of the powers that be that takes offence at just about everything and everybody who disagrees with it. Only recently, we had a sneak preview into the storm and stress that troubles the breast of the kingly beasts who wear the crown.
It was a terrifying parody of a nation talking to itself. “Yes, the general is the general who helped us win the war, but overnight he became a traitor. No, there is no truth in the allegations he makes about our alleged war crimes and no, there will be no alleged investigation into those allegations. In fact, there will be no investigations into this, that or any other allegations. Take it from us, we will not permit it or tolerate it or accommodate you or be nice to anyone who is not nice to us. Because, everyone who is not for us is against us. And besides, the only important thing now that the war has been won is development.”
Now this may have a lilting pseudo-patriotic ring to it (especially the part where traitors are made overnight). But the fact that our high priests, the lowly opposition and those of the rest of us in-between heaven and hell have spoken out against this kind of high-handed low-down skulduggery is a pointer to the double-minded ethic being practised by the bullies – er, the powers – that be. Of course, until something legal, strongly political or uprisingly, revoltingly, populist (hint, hint) can be done about retarding the tendencies of those with arrested development, we may well continue to be merely at our wit’s end. |
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