July 29, 2017

307

Wafers-

Exciting times, n'est-ce pas? Events in Washington are like a (very) bad movie. What shall this chronicle of frenzied self-destruction be called? "Die Hard with a Vengeance"? "House of Cards in Collapse"? "Lemmings Running to the Sea"? "Turkeys Rushing Toward Armageddon"? "Come Back, Reince Priebus!"? You get the idea.

I have to admit to my own lack of imagination. When I wrote Twilight (2000), or DAA (2006), or WAF (2011), the 2017 scenario of the endgame never once entered my mind. Maybe it would have, if I had written a book of cartoons. There are a number of ways a civilization can collapse, of course, but death by absurdity was one I just never thought of.

In one of his books--I think maybe his autobiography--Henry Kissinger muses on how strange and capricious History is, choosing as its agents men whom one would never imagine occupying their historical roles. He says how he was sitting in the Oval Office with Nixon, one day, observing a man whose pants were a bit too short, revealing white socks, talking in a kind of dumb vernacular, and in general, being a dork (my word, not Henry's, altho that was the idea); and thinking to himself, "*This* is the president of the United States?" I don't' think Henry has weighed in on Trumpi and the current cast of characters who people the Trump administration as yet, but clearly we need a language that goes way beyond dork and white socks. One wonders if such a vocabulary even exists.

Well, if it's absurdity, let it be absurdity. To a declinist, whatever works is the thing that counts.

O&D, amigos; O&D.

-mb