A Journal of the Plague Year: Day 289: Valedictory for a Clown
by David Ackley
Benjamin compared public life under Hitler to being “trapped in a theater [where] one had to follow the events on the stage whether one wanted to or not, had to make them again and again, willingly or unwillingly, the subject of one's thought and speech.” Now, however, the house lights will go up, the trash-strewn setting of the late squalid fantasies will be revealed, the main actors will be jeered from the stage, and we will step out, blinking, into some only half-familiar world, which -- contagion and all-- can't help but be better than the vile and exhausting performance we will have escaped at last.
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Author's Note
Here ends this Journal of a Plague Year.
Other stories by David Ackley
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yep. *
Buh-bye, clown!
Thanks, Jerry. I appreciate the comments, both!
tic-tic-tic-tic...
FWIW here's my general theory of Trump 2020 in Plague Time:
At some point on the way out he is supposed to have said:
We were not a regular administration.
Yours was not an administration at all. Yours was a permanent campaign. When the plague came, and you were called on to govern, you couldn't do it. You (your dreadful entourage) (your awful family) didn't know what governing meant and still less what it required. So efforts at pandemic mitigation got assimilated into the viewpoint of your campaign, sometimes an instrument for sectarian politics, other times a backdrop, always a problem of public relations before it was one of public health.
Stephen,
Back in the days of radio and film as the avatars of mass communication,someone said this will take us from politicians who can govern to those who perform. I wonder if it occurred to them that we'd come to a day, like now, when we'd have politicians who could only perform, artful dodgers, grifters, and unemployed actors.
!
"can't help but be better" - Great addition to the series, David.
Especially like the ending: "we will have escaped at last".
Thanks, Sam, glad you stayed along for the ride.
The tragedy is that half the country still lives in the play.
Indeed.
****
Yeah, Daniel, there's that.
Such a fitting ending is indeed welcome.*
Thanks indeed, James.
Yes, Tim, interesting how necessity contrives such a suitable ending for one who dismissed it, thinking himself exempt.