Apres moi, le deluge

Our capacity for justice makes democracy possible, and our capacity for injustice makes democracy necessary - Reinhold Niebuhr

It is equally illegal for rich and poor to sleep under bridges. - French Proverb

Louis XIV’s prescient words are the metaphor for our time. His reign as the King of France built the nation into an international power while simultaneously bankrupting it. Le deluge reminds us that the raw pursuit of power and influence have their costs. That seems to be the lesson of history and of recent politics.

The deluge came to mind as over 9 inches of rain fell on us over the weekend. While we live on a ridge, our front hallway was flooded, just on some of the runoff from the driveway. It was a cloudburst.

My attention soon turned to a contemporary deluge, a regieme fixated only on power and influence. It is the ultimate self defeating behavior in governance. That focus has failed to have any impact on the hurricanes, market collapses and wars of choice that have come our way. The failure of Louis XIV and of the current occupant are, at root, theological in nature. Each have rejected a balanced stewardship of the whole of a nation’s life as too complicated. They substitute simplistic power formulae in place of a solid understanding a complicated world. The Hebrew Prophets*, along with the ancient Greeks agree that our misguided aims can bring on le deluge. And the stakes continue to build. Global Climate Change will challenge our best efforts. But the ancients warned us of this sort of excess.

At bottom, we need to grasp reality “as it is” with all its complexity. It is not enough to be satisfied with our preferred formulae. A bipolar world of good and evil, simply cannot get its arms around the nuanced real life situations we face. It creates synthetic verities, truthiness as Stephen Colbert calls it. We need to pull our economy, the environment, our military forces and our politics back from the precipice.

The adage goes, “even a blind pig comes up with an acorn now and then.” Maybe we’ll get lucky this time.

*See especially the prophet Amos for a vivid description of contemporary politics.