I haven't written this blog since 2019. I'm not sure why I stopped. It may have been dismay over the election of someone who cared more about himself than about the country. But then, why him? There have been many others who were just as self-focused, even others more blatantly self-serving and I kept writing through the time they strutted and fretted upon their stage. I must ask myself what is so bothersome about his ascendance?
As I look back, 2019 was among the earlier years when I was busy pointing out the non-entity represented by Sarah Palin and the ragtag group that were her family. Over time, I came to see her as an opportunist, in line with her successors, Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert. They were good-time girls, laughing up a storm while peddling beers to the boys in the bar. I may have felt uncomfortable about her prominence then, but I didn't see the danger. Time has changed that. Now, I see Palin as someone associated with a tawdry obsession to own the libs, which really means what they call the establishment. All Trump could offer them was a giant no to the powers that were. But it seems it was enough. I imagine her wishing she could be with Boebert and Greene, sitting on laps, peddling crudeness, and wondering how to get more media coverage.
And where does that leave the gladiators of the owning the libs? They stand in the colosseum, their sword poised over the poor devil with the wife, admittedly a former slave, and the son she's borne him. How much honor is there from Ceasar's thumb? Up, the gladiator pulls his comrade up and the wife and son have their family for one more day. Thumbs down, the woman goes weeping to wipe off the sweat and dirt and prepare the man for burial. And what was gained in pleasing Ceasar? Did Ceasar care when he doomed a man to death? Did the people watching feel that some great victory came from watching the death of a man already downed? What mighty truth was proved? What profit came from vanquishing those already vanquished?
Is that what it means to own the libs? To gloat in vainglorious pride about the final disposition of any enemy that you might have shared a beer with at other times? And what does it say about a Caesar that expects this as a daily invocation to his power and pandering to the masses?
One day, our buildings will lie festering below layers of natural vines--or, as Carl Sandburg said--beneath the grass that covers all. One day, nothing will matter in the same way that it seems today, and one day we will remember that the poor devil we are burying was yet another victim of the uncaring demagogues among us.
And what will they say of us? I suppose they can say that they owned the libs.