Essays in Idleness

Up here in the High Doganate, we are reactionaries, not squishy “conservatives.” True, there is only one of us up here, but I speak for the majority. The number of politicians we trust is even smaller. We don’t think there is a political solution, to anything.

There are, however, better and worse, among the unacceptables, and that is why we came to heartily endorse that Trump fellow: the least political among major politicians. But let us not get carried away. His political outlook is rife with unexamined progressive notions. His conservatism is itself rather modest. It is something that he has been acquiring, and it will take him at least five more electoral cycles to possess. He might be ready for office in 2040, as a compromise candidate with the squishies of the Left. At his present pace, I don’t think he can hope to become a genuine reactionary until about anno 2200, and by then he may not even be running for office.

Meanwhile, to his credit, he has served as a fat bludgeon against the vilest beasts in the rest of his trade. For how can one look upon such lowlife as Biden, or Harris, or Schumer, or Pelosi, without acknowledging their moral stench? Compared to them, Trump is a holy innocent, doing only what he thinks right and necessary.

But nature is not full of venomous snakes. Look deeper, through the microscope, and perceive a world of “fleas, flukes, and cuckoos,” as the naturalists say; of mites and tongue-worms who invade society’s very bronchial tubes; of Protozoa destroying the red corpuscles in our veins; flagellates dispersing into every organ; trypanosomes burrowing right into our bone marrow. Gentle reader cannot begin to enumerate the illegal immigrants, passing through our human walls; and as one of those naturalists said of the birds, they are “aviating zoological gardens.”

Which is not to be uncharitable. Parasites have to live, too, and even the greatest parasites have parasites on them, and within, descending through the great chain of being. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, said someone pretending to be Nietzsche, and my own family doctor (whenas I was a child), said we must learn to look at things from the parasites’ point of view. They’re just trying to get on in life, and if their behaviour results in their host’s death, they have rendered themselves homeless.

Indeed, this is the problem with the Batflu, so far as I can see. If it had really been contracted in a wet market, it would probably have been harmless, or at worst, perhaps killed a few diners, here and there. But being a human-created thing, from an American-sponsored laboratory in Wuhan, all bets were off. The researchers there are dedicated to enhancing viruses, for study. The Doctor Frankensteins are often the first victims, in their attempts to create new life.

Or, to be fair, the parasites are their first victims. No self-respecting parasite aspires to be a killer, like Governor Cuomo of New York. He didn’t actually intend to wipe out so many inhabitants of that state’s nursing homes. He was merely inattentive, except to the celebration of himself.

On the much smaller scale, most parasites are like this; except that they omit the political grandstanding. They are part of an ecosystem, and when they foolishly bring it down, they must look for a place in the revised one. It isn’t always easy to be a parasite. Have a thought for them.

As a reactionary this appeals to me — charity towards one’s worst enemies — even though many of them are appallingly squishy.