Published: November 03, 2009 08:10 pm      

LION AND THE LAMB: Old politics in new times

The Kid and the Cub were napping on broken hay bale on a sunny hillside on a chilly fall afternoon. Little white clouds dotted the sky. Leaves were cascading down from nearby trees. 

The Kid suddenly awakened and sat upright. 

“What’s wrong?” the Cub asked. 

The Kid blinked. “I dreamed I was at a rally on the court house lawn.”

“What was the rally for?” the Cub asked. 

“A new political party,” the Kid answered. “People were complaining about politicians and Washington. They were shouting at each other and trading political buttons and a band was playing patriotic songs. A huge sign near the center of the crowd jiggled up and down. It read: ‘If the Creator had intended for us to monkey with stem cells, He would have made them bigger and easier to get at!’ A banner was stretched between two trees: ‘Let Us Doggedly Demand Ignorance in Technology, Environment and Science. LUDDITES all the way!’ A woman speaker in a long black dress was on the platform. ‘My friends and fellow Luddites,’ she said through a bull horn, ‘I welcome you and I love you all and I want you to rejoice because your guns and Bibles will be safe when we get power!'

“The growing crowd roared and she went on, ‘We’ll turn the county into the republic it was intended to be—free from the mob and mobocracy! Move over, democracy!’  The crowd roared again and the speaker beamed and smiled, nodding to the crowd’s syncopated clapping.

“‘We’ll do away with the stupid questions our enemies are asking. All questions are answered by the Bible and in the Constitution.’ The crown screamed approval. ‘And we’ll stop the government from giving handouts and passing new laws!’ A larger crowd roar erupted. ‘And all those people who want to collect information and perform experiments and analyze data will need to find real jobs for themselves! Let them flip burgers and be sales associates instead of finding facts and writing tiresome reports! We’ll enforce laws to make sure that the wrong people don’t have a voice in this great land that was created by us Luddites! We’ll speak for everyone!’”

The Kid frowned. “There were so many people with signs that no one under six feet tall could see anything but placards with long messages. The speaker continued. ‘We are our brother’s keepers. You keep your brother under control and I’ll keep my brother quiet!’ Another sign had a line stolen from an old movie, ‘Science? We don’t need no stinkin’ science!’ And one sign that had ‘lunch’ scratched out and ‘sunshine’ written above so it said, ‘There is no free sunshine’.”

The Kid paused before continuing his description. “And then they started cheering, ‘Drill baby, drill!’ It got so loud and shrill that all the dogs around began to howl. An older woman sang a hymn as she hoisted a large sign reading, ‘No new health insurance now or ever—we’re covered.’ A woman wearing a big hat and cowboy boots hit one of the howling dogs with a sign and the sign got caught in the dog’s collar and the dog went yelping up Main Street dragging a sign behind that said, ‘Limbaugh loves you!’  Another sign said, ‘If you let them raise gasoline tax today, they’ll tax mother’s milk tomorrow!’ It was nearly obscured by other signs: ‘They want to steal our wind! The wind is ours! No more wind generators on our land! Burning coal and oil is a sacred right!’”

“I’m not feeling well,” the Kid said, trembling. 

The Cub was concerned for his friend. “That was a really bad dream. Are you okay?” the Cub asked, worriedly, and then added, “I hope it’s not possible for goats to catch swine flu from humans in a bad dream?”