The Glass Bead Game

I suspect many of us don’t realize how truly lucky we are. First, we are living in extremely interesting times. I could say ‘perilous’ but that would attach subjectivity and skew what I’m trying to say. Second, we enjoy this space to air our views which are then read by a good many people. This puts us in the high upper percentile of the world’s millions who, for the most part, do not possess the means even to access a daily newspaper. They react to the vagaries of their rulers in predictable but ineffective ways even as they must watch the inevitable tragedy unfold before their very eyes. We are pretty much in a similar position, but we are able to shout (as the ancient sad tale, Antigone, teaches us to do). It is still uncertain whether or not our shouting will actually change the course of history. Experience tells us it won’t. But we are blessed to be shouting nonetheless. It is the only thing left to us.

I was brought face to face with this dilemma when my computer crashed last week. Suddenly, my shouting days were over. I felt as one with a noose already around my neck and tightening - unable to make myself heard. The network news no longer interested me. I had no desire to open a newspaper or listened to the radio. What good was any of that if I could not respond? I might as well have been living in a grass hut on some distant seashore, counting the waves crashing on the beach; or, in the shadow of some great impenetrable mountain.

Don’t assume for a moment that this shadow play we are witnessing - much of which, by its very nature, remains hidden - is composed of random coincidences. America has entered a political era in which it has likewise left behind a tradition and a certain skill. The battle ground has up until now been in academe, the various university outposts of which, in times of war and barbarization, have become little islands of rationality where the better minds of the opposing parties cautiously seek each other out and grope their way toward reconciliation. We, at ground level, only sense the fallout of what has been decided to date.

Whereas we feel unjustly excluded from this elite world, where it seems decisions are taken without regard to us, we must nevertheless conclude that the Left has won the struggle against conservatism - and by a decisive margin. How it will ultimately translate into our lives is still anybody’s guess.