If I had a rupee for every witty aphorism I’d heard on patriotism, I wouldn’t be a pauper penning pieces for your favourite weekend newspaper to keep soma and pneuma together. No, dears, Soma and Pneuma are not friends of mine, but the Greek for body and spirit. And I mean my body and spirit – not yours! So put that pen down… and the paper away… and forget about dashing off a strong letter to the Editor about the arrant nonsense that columnists dish out every dreary Sunday after another.
In the meantime, I could tell you the one about how to be really ancient one must have no body, to be really modern one must have no spirit, and to be really Greek one must have no clothes – just to egg you on to put pen to paper after all; but no, as it turns out, the temptation to do that is just about the one thing that I can resist today.
So, instead, I’ll tell you a story about three rascally scoundrels who comprise our zeitgeist – and if even that doesn’t please you, you may sit down to scribble that poison pen letter.
Ready? Here goes… the name of our anti-heroes are Rac Ism, Nepot Ism, and Patriot Ism – but if you don’t believe me, look up any Who’s Who: they’re all there, all three of ’em!
Once upon a time there was a King (remember, dears, this is a folk story) who wanted a wise, strong, dedicated, charismatic, etc. advisor, who would help him to rule Cloud Cuckoo Land with an iron fist… although he wanted his people, the Re Publicans, to feel only a velvet glove. So he took out a full-page ad in the media (remember also, dears, that this is a modern fairy tale).
The first person who answered the ad was Rac Ism. He was a half-bully and half-coward, and fully committed to a chauvinistic cause. Instead of jam, he ate jingoism with his morning toast. Pretty soon, however, it was he who was toast – because his scorched earth tactics decimated all the King’s horses and all the King’s men. So the King decided to sideline him, and sent him packing as Cloud Cuckoo Land’s ambassador to the Courts of the World.
The next person to correspond with His Majesty was Nepot Ism. And correspond he did – rather closely, in fact… so much so that many of His Majesty’s courtiers mistook the pretender to the throne to be King. And no sooner had the doppelganger been commissioned as the Monarch’s Missionary to the Masses, he began to employ an endless stream of kith and kin as his ad-visers, con-sultants, and sex-cretaries. Pardon me, dears, your slip is showing? Jolly well fed up with all the family and friends of Nepot lording it over all other Isms that the King dispatched him, too, with dispatch – with a kick upstairs to a prominent place from where he could be seen, but not heard. Blood, they say, is thicker than bilge water (Don’t ask me why; I don’t say it: ‘they’ do!). They also say that rank has its privilege; and that where there’s a will, inheritance, or legacy, there’s a relative. That’s nepotism for you (and that’s what I say, too!).
The last person to get in touch with our by-now-weary sovereign was Patriot Ism. But he was a crawler on his belly, and more subtle than all the other snakes in the Garden of Eden. Where Rac Ism used brute force and Nepot Ism preferred animal cunning, Patriot Ism was so sophisticated that he eschewed Aunty Soma and Sister Pneuma – and went for the jugular: that is to say, the mind…
because, all good political creatures instinctively know, the battle for the body and the spirit begins in the mind. Mr. P. Ism put a whole new spin on the maxim of the old schools that while flattery is the food of fools, yet now and then your men of wit will condescend to take a bit. To the King, it was a matter of the mind… as long as he didn’t mind Patriot Ism using his and all other Isms’ names in vain, it did not matter.
And so they all lived happily ever after. Rac Ism under wraps in semi-permanent retirement; Nepot Ism skulking like a sharp-toothed serpent or ungrateful child (I forget which) under the family escutcheon, the blot; and Patriot Ism ruling the roost. MORALE: Rac Ism is bad, and Nepot Ism is worse, but Patriot Ism is the elixir of political life that will cover a multitude of sins…
[Disclaimer: The persons parodied and pilloried are entirely representative, and bear an alarming resemblance to real-life people whom you know and love to hate…] |
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