The Fable of the Marching Morons

 

Once upon a time in a far away and magical land of beneficent aristocrats there lived a porcelain skinned and raven haired goobette called Eve. One night while home alone Eve tuned in her television set to one of the 300 same as they ever were and same as they always are channels that broadcast on the screens of the delighted subjects of the Kingdom of Evermore. That evening Eve watched a film called My Left Foot starring Daniel Day-Lewis, and an episode of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer directed and written by Joss Whedon, the creator of the show, both of which, following the dictum of Oligarch Kings that ruled Evermore were broadcast in order to display for all Evermorons to see the ignorance, arrogance, and decedence of the demonic outside world. The next morning Eve, wrote a blog of no more than the 140 simple declarative characters--no more that 140 characters by divine command of the Kingdom's kind rulers--for Evermore's curated state blog, on "why" Daniel Day-Lewis was such a horrid (her words, my emphasis) actor and why Joss Whedon was such a horrible writer and director. In a later blog post Eve revealed that god had revealed to her what right acting, right writing, and right directing were one night while she was watching a docudrama on Elon Musk on the Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow Gospel of Wealth network.

Meanwhile a few cottages down the street from Eve's perfectly delightful pink cottage, there lived another porcelain skinned Evermoron in yet another of the little pink cottages that dotted the urban areas and rural landscape of the flat barren lands of Evermore named Adam. Though the flaxen haired and stern Adam had never been to college, had never studied "ancient" languages like Hebrew, koine Greek, or Aramaic, the languages in which the Evermore Bible were written in, and had only been somewhat sentient during his mandatory presence in the Kingdom's many civics classes over the years, Adam proclaimed, and proclaimed that he was sanctioned to do so by the kind oligarchs of Evermore, that he was not only an interpreter of holy writ, but that he was the interpreter of the Kingdom's holy writ as correctly handed down, of course, by Evermore's divinely inspired oligarchs. Like Eve, Adam discourses daily on the Kingdom's only blog, again in no more than 140 characters, on why the ramblings of eggheaded scholars from outside the Kingdom trained in Hebrew, Aramaic, common Greek, and Ancient Near Eastern history and culture are wrong and he is right. What need do I have of egghead scholarship, Adam contends again and again in his online discourses, when I have direct access to the timeless and spaceless words of the thus saith our Oligarchic Lords.

That evening as Eve and Adam sat at home they recited the Evermoron daily mantra of who needs acting experience or education, writing experience and education,  and education in general when we, as our divine benefactors have told us, are better actors, writers, and interpreters of sacred scripture than anyone else in the whole wide world because? As always they praised Jeh thirty-thee times before they climbed into bed.

One day a dark and dirty stranger in ragged clothes came to the hamlet of Bliss in which Eve and Adam lived. If Eve was such a specialist in the arts of acting and writing, she asked, why wasn't she in the employ of those who hired actors, writers, and directors? Why wasn't she, he queried, displaying for all the world to see how good acting, writing, and directing should be done? If Adam, she queried, was such a authoritative interpreter of holy writ why did he not know the divine languages in which the divine holy writ was written in or know anything about the contexts in which Jeh worked in order to reveal truth, right, and the Evermoron way to the world? And why, she asked, did both deny those who did each night before they snuggled into the comforts of their beds?

The inhabitants of the Kingdom of Evermore after listening to this clearly certifiable alien whose name was Clemens for a couple of days, rightly channelled what they heard and saw on the Kingdom's radio and television stations and as one and asked, hosanna, haysanna, sanna, sanna, why such an arrogant and ignorant stranger was ever allowed to enter the divine Kingdom of Evermore and sully its divine conformist ways in the first place and prayed that divine punishment be meted out to the deviant offender as recompense for what she had done. Hallelujah.

In the end, of course, Evermorons had nothing to worry about. Two days after the stranger's arrival the divine, beneficent, and paternalistic oligarchic doctrinal kings of the Kingdom did what they had to do: they took the madwoman into custody and burnt her at the stake, both figuratively and literally since that is the only way to snuff out and arrogant and ignorant soul of those who have the gall and audacity to ask critical questions about their holy and sacred best of all possible worlds. As for the punishment of the stranger, the subjects of the Kingdom felt no guilt and had no pangs of conscience whatsover after the divine judgement of the holy auto-da-fe. They found comfort in the soothing mantras of their divine leaders as relayed on their divine wirelss and television sets which proclaimed that as a holy and divine race they had every right do what they did to heretics like the stranger. And after all, as they all noted as one after hearing what their leaders had to say on the Kingdom's radio and television outlet outlets, there was a sign warning the stranger before she entered the Kingdom which read: "Check your demonic critical mind at the local law enforcement office door when you arrive lest you feel the hammer of the law come down upon your eggely weggely little noggins. And all the Doctrinal Kings' horses and all the Doctrinal Kings' men would never put eggely weggely back together again.

And so it goes...and so it goes...and so it goes...and so it goes...and where it's going some of us know...