A Wrest Coast Perspective

by Frank Darbe

Swimming in Cocytus...

I get busy, raising kids, going to school, working, and watching with horripilation as the as the stock market, housing prices, and the economy plunge the foundation of my life down to Cocytus. So its been a while since I posted anything. I imagine myself now swimming in Cocytus, that bottomless frozen sea, constrained by the giants on the rim of Malebolge, waiting for the next shoe to drop. Cocytus is a special place. Traitors, as distinguished from the "merely" fraudulent in that their acts, are frozen here. This betrayal is not the type we associate with the selling of national secrets, or merely being a liberal in a nation that the minority defines as Conservative. To be frozen on Cocytus involves betraying one in a special relationship to the betrayer.

This is the type of betrayal that occurs when a government that rules by consent of the governed leads through lies and legislates through obfuscation. President George W. Bush has a special ice cube reserved in Cocytus, surround by his entire administration, and the Conservative House and Senate. Democrats have a place here to; Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and every Democrat that promised to do all it took to end the Iraq War and stop the Presidential Rampage through the Constitution. Even Obama, that man of hope who voted recently to approve the FISA bill's anti-constitutional provisions, has a place here for betrayal.

We are here, also, we citizens. Even the defense of "Don't blame me I voted for Gore" doesn't keep us out. We provide the foundation for our government with our consent and we are the real source of government power. When the President told 935 lies to take us to war, we did not investigate, we surrendered to promised safety. When the President declared we would be an "Ownership Society" and all become rich as Croesus because housing prices would go up forever, we accepted the bribe and never asked how we would get endless wealth and what we would pay for it.

We all get busy with this or that detail of our lives and forget that tyranny is created by compliance. We exchange our freedom for trinkets and toys brought to us by Consumerism. Due diligence falls to bread and circuses. We all swim in Cocytus and worry that we are not at the bottom yet, and that Dante forgot a lower circle reserved for the compliant.

Apparantly, not a lot of people here have read Dante.

κωκυτός is the river of lamentation or "wailing" in Greek mythology. Could this have something to do with our being a "nation of whiners"? I happen to agree that we are. Too bad the man who speaks the truth gets battered from pillar to post.

I'm sorry to hear that you, Frank, feel you have been relegated to that river. I haven't thought of you as a wailer or a whiner, but rather someone who approaches challenges head-on and strives to beat them.

Of course, given the "leadership" we have been forced to endure in this nation, it isn't surprising that so many are reduced to wailing and whining, if not to absolute despair. We don't have much to work with. Obama looks good, considering the alternatives. But even he won't save us if we don't start doing something for ourselves. It ain't going to be served up on a silver platter. We deserve whatever we get. And if we want better, we need to step up to the plate and work for it.

Compliance, I think, is very close to complicity--maybe identical to it. "BOHICA" isn't restricted to the Beltway interior: anyone who doesn't stand up for their own rights as allegedly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution deserves exactly what they get. Elected representatives who just go along to get along are there because we put them there and because we keep them there. Dante and Greek mythology be damned: Walt Kelly had it right when he wrote, "We have met the enemy and he is us". The enemy must be defeated.

For a while, I had harbored secret fears of spending eternity in that more warmish part of Hell reserved for lawyers. And spending it with lawmakers such as the "gub-mint" types that are running the show at present.

Then I remembered, the Vice barely got a Bachelors, and the other guy got an MBA from that august Cambridge University, on this side of the pond -- not the "real" Cambridge, (though I personally favor the Oxford locus for most effective larnin'.)

Sadly, I didn't get around to reading this excellent post until today. But as they say, great minds...great legs.

Thanks Frank.

I think I'll go clean up my act now.

Just to avoid either roasting or freezing, through eternity, with the characters that populate Gucci Gulch and other environs unsuited to people of ordinary intelligence and average desires*.

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(*HT: Benjamin Cardozo on the definition of the "reasonable man".)

Lillibet, not ALL lawyers deserve hellfire and more. I've known several who were among the most decent people I've known. Then there are the ones who have gotten elected to public office. You know the story of the 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean....

You definitely sound like one of the "good guys"!

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quote:

Originally posted by Joe Sexton:
Lillibet, not ALL lawyers deserve hellfire and more. I've known several who were among the most decent people I've known. Then there are the ones who have gotten elected to public office. You know the story of the 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean....

You definitely sound like one of the "good guys"!

..................................

Joe, you have no idea how much your message meant to me today. Really. Thank you. I only hope I live up to your words with my deeds.

No matter what we have done as individuals, we will still have to go through history with these folks.

Lately, I've been contemplating Ghandi. The path he took required incredible personal sacrifice and integrity. Though I've been a passionate vocal critic of what I see as wrong, I failed to pushed that advocacy to the ultimate point.

I've started to ask myself, "What are you willing to give up for what you believe." So I go to protests and work to change minds. But I"m always concerned that it isn't enough.

Good for you, Frank, trying to make a difference!

Like you, though, I'm often concerned that whatever I can do is never enough. The reason, as I see it, is that there are too many people who are trying to change other people's minds without having any desire or inclination to alter their own thinking in the slightest. It's that old "Don't confuse me with the facts: my mind is already made up" syndrome. Even worse are the apathetic masses who just don't give a damn. And still, we try...perchance to experience the little victory here or there; or, at least, to experience the satisfaction of being able to say "Hey! I tried!"

Frank, you are among those who I consider to be the first line of defense against wrongs committed by those in power against this country.

Methinks thou are far too hard on thee!

You have shown the depth of your integrity many times over! Hold your head high!

And to Joe I say the same!

Lillibet, you, dear friend, do not as a lawyer who can "swim with sharks", act!

I have rarely met or known a Member of the Bar who has demonstrated such a degree of caring for others, not feathering your own "legal" nest, as you! And I have several uncles and a cousin whom I love dearly, who may have met "Jaws" on a swim or two.

Should lawyers as a whole (ever seen a half of a lawyer...that would be an interesting sight) behave with the integrity exhibited by you, even politicians who "hail" from your profession might learn how to properly behave!

Be proud. You represent your chosen profession to a degree most don't even think of in their dreams!

Frank, you presented us with an excellent essay! Thank you!

Frank, once again you have touched that part of our consciousness that deserves a swift kick on occasion to wake us from our self-centered existance.

While I'm not yet ready to admit to swimming in Dante's sea of dispair, I will accept the fact that I often feel like the proverbial "voice in the wilderness". Or a modern day Cassandra, if you will allow me to skip over to the Greek world for a bit.

Yet, thanks to the extreme intelligence of the founding fathers, there is hope built into our horizon. If we do manage to make some monumental mistake, we also have the ability to rectify that error every election cycle. If we elect a buffoon, as we have in the past, we merely have to wait out his/her term and then replace them with a (hopefully) less inept version.

There are literally hundreds of laws on the books already about ethics codes that our elected officials must follow. We need to be more diligent about ensuring that they are enforced, regardless of party affiliation.

Our elected officials would be good to heed the old saying about "Caesar's wife must be must be above suspicion" or else they will find themselves out office quite quickly.
GP