THIS PAPIER-MACHÉ MEPHISTOPHELES
THIS PAPIER-MACHÉ MEPHISTOPHELES
“The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899
Imbecile rapacity. That’s the disease that is crushing our democracy.
One of the most influential books I read as a freshman in college was Joseph Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness. Its theme harmonized with the American imperialism we were party to in Southeast Asia during the 60s, and with the question of that era: what is civilization, and how is it differentiated from savagery?
Yes, there were many rationalizations for our crusade in Viet Nam, and there are rationalizations today for opening states where humans - people - are dropping like flies, not necessarily because this new virus is unbeatable, but because our economy must always be in a stupendous, unbelievably yuge, hyperbolic growth mode. This notion that economic growth stands astride our nation like the Colossus of Rhodes, has become an ideological replacement for the Statue of Liberty, and it echoes Mary Trump’s title for her new book, Too Much and Never Enough.
Perhaps all empires eventually succumb to this. History says as much. I suspect that the reason rests somewhere in our lizard brains, in the memory palace of our limbic system that evolved before reason took up residency in our brains. And it is the argument that persuades rational human beings to scrap their civilization in favor of an aggressive offense, with this unquenched desire to be conquerors. That’s where we are now with Donald Trump and with his Republican supporters. Too much and never enough.
This imbecilic rapacity of ours is not a hard sell in the least. It is often clothed in patriotism, and the notion of national exceptionalism. From Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump, from the jingoism of Manifest Destiny, to Britain’s East India Trading Company, the impulse to expand and dominate is both the source of our wealth and the eventual cause of our decline. Elizabeth I had a motto that described the comforting assurance of her reign: “Dieu et mon droit’. God and my right.
Donald Trump’s peremptory directive to red state governors to open all commerce immediately, and his refusal to issue a federal directive mandating the wearing of face-masks during this epidemic, are motivated by Conrad’s “imbecilic rapacity”. Trump’s reign shall not recognize challenges to his empire.
“I let him run on, this papier-maché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried, I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
In the discussion of this book in my freshman class, I said the obvious: that this wonderful book we had just read together is an indictment of colonialism, of the arrogance of the West as it crashed through the world in search of some trinket, some meaningless prize, while enslaving everyone and everything it encountered. It was an indictment of the mercantile West that reduced life to the acquisition of both resources and meaningless adornment. Joseph Conrad’s Belgians sought ivory. We are literally dying to process chicken for consumption – requiring workers to stand shoulder to shoulder in 20th century production lines without the modest protection that proper personal protective equipment would provide. This exploitation of our human resources represents our 21st Century version of colonial mercantilism. And this is our new slavery. Essential workers, health providers, and those who work in nursing homes are denied resources that would protect them from death. The only explanation for this savage policy is that, as political power surges and empires grow, there will be collateral damage. In the case of America, that damage can be found among the losers: the poor, the brown-skinned, the unproductive elderly. A mere culling of the herd.
This callous and sadistic Republican policy syncs nicely with its policy to skew our tax policy toward the purported “winners”; to use weapons of war to quell peaceful protestors in the streets, to subjugate those in opposition to their rapacity. These are nothing but the results of their claim to monarchic power in the name of progress. For Republican voters, this is the exaltation of petty thieves and the hollow triviality of their moral rationalizations. These Republican leaders are, indeed, parasites who suck the life out of our country, out of our democracy.
They reside in our evolutionary heart of darkness, and the only common ground we have is that we can now glimpse the horror. Their power over our countrymen is a fatal pestilence that must be extirpated - pulled out by the roots - if we are to survive, grow, and flourish as a liberal democracy founded upon decency.
