Day 183…
It is a generally grey day today. The sky is white, and the sea is the color of a warship.
The only movement I can see at all outside of our front door is a skull and crossbones pirate flag gently flapping in the light breeze across the street on the front of a little cottage. The flag has three skulls on it, arranged in a row.
That design is connected, without much apparent historical evidence, to a pirate named Christopher Condent. He was also known as Billy One-Hand.
He was born in Devon, England in the early 1700’s. I’m not sure how he became a pirate, but once he was up and running, he seems to have done a good job of it.
He plundered throughout the Bahamas until he was chased off. He then ended up in the Cape Verde Islands. From there he went to Brazil. He reportedly cut off the ears and noses of some of the prisoners he picked up along the way and kept them as prizes.
He went back to the Cape Verde Islands and captured a flotilla of twenty ships and kept the warship for himself, renaming it The Fiery Dragon. He then ended up all the way over on the other side of the ocean, and in fact on the other side of Africa, in Madagascar.
By the 1720’s, the British East India Company was starting to make life difficult for pirates, so Condent gathered his wealth and went to the island of Bourbon (now Réunion) where he negotiated a pardon for himself from the French governor.
He and about twenty of his men settled on the island and he eventually married the Governor’s sister-in-law. After a while, the couple moved to France and settled down. He became a rather successful merchant. He seems to have lived out the remainder of his days in comfort as a respectable man.
The world we are living in these days, seems to be ruled by men exactly like Christopher Condent.
I can sit here and look out over the endless expanse of water in front of me and easily imagine our President out there, on a stolen ship, moving from island to island. Taking what he can, where he can, then cutting his losses when his pursuers get too close and moving on to a new place to do it all over again. All of it done with enough bluster and bravado that it obscures the fact that there is no plan behind any of it whatsoever.
This same style of basically seat-of-your-pants take-what-you-can decision making on a high government level seems to be happening in other countries as well.
After weeks and weeks of getting people to send their kids back to school, encouraging them to eat out and go to pubs, assuring them that it was safe to reopen workplaces, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of England, suddenly announced yesterday that gatherings of more than six people would be banned. Despite his baseless assurances that all would be well, Britain has experienced a notable and completely unsurprising rise in coronavirus cases.
Oh, well, new plan.
When the Prime Minister came to power, he did so largely on his promise to push through a workable plan for Great Britain’s exit from the European Union. At one-point last year he actually suspended Parliament to stop a debate over his moves to complete Brexit. Britain’s Supreme Court later deemed that maneuver unlawful.
Earlier this week, he pushed forward a new plan that completely contradicts provisions of his earlier plan in regard to Northern Ireland.
Parliament is in an uproar. If the agreements they enter into as a country, can be changed on a capricious whim, then what value will they have moving forward? Why should any other sovereign nation trust them, if they can be so easily dropped.
In light of this, Sir Jonathan Jones, the permanent secretary to the Government Legal Department has resigned in protest.
The Prime Minister doesn’t appear to care less about any of that. He just wants it done. That what he’s proposing is unconstitutional and illegal simply doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care a fig about Sir Jonathan Jones.
It all sounds so depressingly familiar.
We are all basically being led by pirates who are just making it up as they go.
The problem with opposing people like the current President of the United States and the current Prime Minister of Great Britain is that they don’t care about cultural norms. They don’t care about the rule of law.
You can’t argue using those things because they aren’t equal in the minds of the opposing sides of the argument. Saying, “You broke the law” doesn’t have much effect on someone whose response is, “So?”
There’s a little scene in Woody Allen’s film Manhattan where Woody’s character Isaac is walking down the street.
Isaac: Has anybody read that Nazis are going to march in New Jersey, you know? We should go there, get some guys together, you know, get some bricks and baseball bats and really explain things to them.
Man: There was this devastating satirical piece on that on the op-ed page of the Times. It is devastating.
Isaac: Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point.
Woman: Oh, but really biting satire is always better than physical force.
Isaac: No, physical force is always better with Nazis. It’s hard to satirize a guy with shiny boots.
There are going to be three debates between the Republican and Democratic nominee for President. What are those going to look like?
How can the Democratic nominee hope to use his vast years of experience within the structures of our government to debate a Republican nominee who knows nothing of how any of it was designed to operate? Not only does he know nothing about it, he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to be limited by any prior agreement at all.
I think that these debates are going to be a complete sham that will do nothing whatsoever to help clarify this election. The two sides are already deeply entrenched.
It’s just going to end up being a boxing match between two old white men. The fact that one has a moral compass and the other doesn’t, won’t matter in the ring. It’s all going to be about who can land the most blows.
Fog is coming in from across the bay. I can’t even tell the difference between the water and the sky anymore. It’s all just one big hazy white field.
I cannot imagine why that cottage is flying the flag of Billy One-Hand. There must be some contemporary reason that I don’t know about.
In its day, it was meant to strike fear into all who saw it coming at them across the ocean. It looks a bit ridiculous waving out in front of that tiny little beach cottage.
We have long glorified the pirate as a noble rebel.
Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies even made them somewhat lovable. “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.”
It’s one thing to fight against injustice - in that regard some pirates of the past have done society a service. It is quite another to just rob and steal and create anarchy and fear. That’s criminal.
When our leaders start actually behaving like pirates, themselves, then they have to be stopped. That’s criminal.
We don’t need bricks and baseball bats to stop them, all we need to do is vote.
And we need to make sure that everyone around us votes, too.
There are still more people out there who believe in the rule of law than don’t. The pirates would have you think otherwise, but as we all know, pirates never tell the truth.
LoveOverRules...
a banner hanging from a fence outside
St John the Divine
Same plan for me
live my truth
take the best care of me
I was brought up with alot of stories
and lies, withholding of the truth
so I wouldn’t
panic
I in turn
sought ways to keep
numb
from facing the truth
I almost died
from
trying to keep
lies
alive
it took my life
in other ways
my dreams & visions with it
I got another chance
I will fight
to keep my truth alive
one way is to
stop listening to liars
I can smell them in a room
hear it in their voices
and see it
in their
eyes
void of life
All I can do
is be alert and aware around me
and keep
the light
aflame
inside me
and follow that
through
the
darkness
💕💕