There are some expressions we can’t explain why we know what they mean, but we do. The expression – The fish rots from the head - has stunning applications to the emerging reality casting its shadow over the globe. If America is the only super power then our president has the role, at least psychologically, of emperor. The world tends to look to our presidents to set a tone – to interpret global reality – to make “requests” – to set an example – to honor the higher notions that struggle to be a foundation for the world’s staggering future. The man the world now looks to as our president/emperor set a tone instantly. With Jesus in his vest pocket he, as governor, presided over and endorsed 152 executions (the number itself argues against the death penalty as a deterrent.) The cabal that secured the throne for him did it through racist, undemocratic means. To the world, at first blush, this new head had a stench.
But going deeper into the chemical architecture of the head (i.e. - the
brain) there are ferocious regions that we are being forced to navigate because of the present political pathology. First hand experience with Alzheimer's patients illustrate the perils of dealing with a compromised brain mass. The brain stem becomes the seat of power and often a concerned caregiver is confronted with combative behavior from the person with the diseased brain. The inner dialogue that would normally calm the aggressive reflexes of the brain stem is knotted and convoluted like choked circuits. The patient strikes out, hits or kicks. The entire social and family unit surrounding a person held hostage by what is referred to as the reptilian brain is reduced to defensive thinking and postures and by necessity joins the hostage crisis.
The mechanisms of aggression and repetitive behavior, which is the vocabulary of the brain stem, is now the world's emperor. The brain stem is the wound and base of evolution – not the crown. The rhetoric and sensibility being broadcast to us from hallowed halls is the language of gang war. The emanations of a cluster of cells buried beneath the greatest achievement of the universe are bypassing the spiritual hierarchy of the neo cortex and so the global plasma is thick with the primitive. Revenge – survival – aggression – it’s now like a gas that intoxicates the world from the Holy Lands to Nevada to Germany to France. The speed limit on gang mentality and violence has been lifted – the governor on the accelerator has been exiled – the logic of reflex is posing as inspired mission and rescue remedy.
The veil of competing political philosophies justifying military action is gone – it is nakedly about turf. Like Cro-Magnon man all sides are coiled on its haunches ready for street violence. The populous is put in the position of trying to rein in the beasts at the top. It’s the evolved citizens who have the role of leadership while the seats of power are being used as perches for the urge to pounce and secure profit and territory. Nothing guides the violence except the unbridled nerve endings of anger, greed and defensive power management.
The fish rots from the head. It’s a version of the trickle down theory. Instead of money flowing down to the lower classes, it’s the “justifiable” notion that violence will solve the problem. No president can say after a school shooting that students must find other ways to settle their differences. That would be the statement of a legitimate leadership working creatively and intelligently to secure international peace. The statement from the top is that violence works. Any one with his finger on a trigger anywhere hears that loud and clear.
The president, meant to be the steward of the world’s greatest political experiment, now speaks like a gang leader. He speaks from his brain stem to the brain stem of those who love the adrenaline rush of war talk. Others are left scratching their heads wondering how and when the governing body lost the logic of its chain of command. Yes – the white house is there – air force one flies – the radio address happens weekly – and yet the structures don’t match the thought or intent. The shell of the head is in place and it goes through the motions but something within is decaying.
The internal ability for transcendent thought is as convoluted and bollixed as the emperor’s syntax. We are led by mono-syllabic sirens that keep the people cowed and supportive as their taxed harvest goes to bigger and better planes and bombs. And as children and aged parents are fed the scraps of the leftovers, the same man who channels money from those two vulnerable stages of life to instruments of death declares his allegiance to the sacredness of human life.
One can almost understand his opposition to stem cell research. It’s a clear outgrowth of the need for secrecy about the inner workings of his administration.
The question is not so much “What is the world coming to?” The question is “What is the world coming from?’ It’s coming - and rotting - from the head.
Bill C. Davis is a playwright http://www.billcdavis.com/
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