Word count: 775 | Reading time: 4 min read
Pretzel Logic
The calendar turns to 2001 and like most people subjected to Stanley Kubrick’s film version of the Arthur C. Clarke classic, I can’t avoid spaking of Zarathustra, the Nietzscheian cave dweller who inspired Richard Strauss to write what would become the movie’s timpani-pounding opening flourish.
“My suffering and my fellow-suffering — what matter about them!” Nietzsche wrote of Zarathustra, who retreated into a cave in the woods to find what he was seeking, a feat that would be accompanied today by a massive international television audience and a cash prize of $1 million.
“Do I then strive after happiness?” Nietzsche wrote in the third to last paragraph of his wildly meandering tome. “I strive after my work!
“Well! The lion hath come, my children are nigh, Zarathustra hath grown ripe, mine hour hath come: This is my morning, my day beginneth: arise now, arise, thou great noontide! —
“Thus spake Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains.”
So Friedrich Nietzsche was a bit of a Teutonic windbag, but he does have a point.
The next four years might seem like the opening of a dark, dank cavern. We’ll all be much better off in search of the light.
My morning sun is the notion that, like righteous liberals who finally have something to really bitch about, there will also be more than a few conservatives who will wince every time the words “John Ashcroft” and “Attorney General” are mentioned in the same sentence.
The sun gets a little brighter when you consider that a sharply schismed Senate has to sign off on Ashcroft, the former Senator from Missouri, the incumbent who lost to a dead man, helping to ensure a 50-50 Senate. Of real consequence is that he is an ideologue so fierce that moderates of all stripes will likely want someone else in that job.
Another ray of Zarathustrian sunshine emanating from the Bush White House is that a new president from a new party will almost certainly mean a new U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia.
It will be interesting to see what might happen if the region’s top prosecutor is not Ed Rendell’s neighbor and good buddy.
Think about it for a moment. As the horns blare and the percussionists percuss to herald the new millennium, there have been no major political scandals in Philadelphia for years.
On one hand, there’s no evidence to say that’s not the result of good clean government by hizzoners Rendell and Street, which of course is a very good thing.
On the other hand, if a scandal unfolds in the forest and no one is watching, does that mean it was never a scandal?
A Republican lawman in town may very well be looking for scandal, gunning for the former chairman of the DNC. A man who, big yap aside, can still rake in millions for the Democratic party. Said new USAG may also crawl up the nether regions of even the current Democratic occupant of Room 215 in City Hall, who narrowly defeated his Republican challenger and then got plenty of national face time during the Republican National Convention.
Now scandal, in and of itself, is no good thing, as my old editor Kevin Kennedy once taught me via a riddle it took me a while to solve.
Does it merely create heat? asked the tall, craggy-faced redhead who, himself a modern day Zarathustra, once lived in a cave (in Jamaica, as he told me during my job interview).
Or does a juicy morsel of information actually shed some light?
Speaking of morsels, I will miss reading the alarm and urgency of “The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” version of the Clintons’ political life dating back to his days in Arkansas, complete with stories about kids killed after watching drug drops. Though, with Hillary in the Senate and Bill looming Gojira-like on the political horizon, there will still be plenty of grist for the morsel mills concerning that crowd.
As George Walker begins redecorating his new homestead, no doubt getting rid of much of the furniture, especially the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom, or at the very least the mattress, another Vast Conspiracy has arisen. This one with stories about the Bush family and Nazis and smuggling, which are quickly overshadowing the tales of Wild Bill as the main thread of interest on a listserv I subscribe to called “CIA-DRUGS.”
These are sure to be some interesting days, with a new Bush in the Rose Garden.
Like cavemen Kennedy and Zarathustra, I am looking for the light.
