W. Grey Champion
From the Moleskine
My Moleskine accompanies me everywhere, for the purpose of catching those elusive thoughts that bombard one’s consciousness and may or may not be worthy of elaboration. I have shared these musings on my blog, From the Moleskine, each week for many years. Originally a Google blog, I moved it to this website when my third book was released. In The Weekly will be recent reflections I seek to record and to share with readers. Described here are other headings, also updated weekly.
Dokusan: In Japan, dokusan is a private meeting of a Zen student with his master. For background, readers must see my book, Conjuring Archangel: Chronicle of a Journey on the Path, because the conjuring continues.
In the Courtyard: As my collaborator on the blog, my friend Anna reports under this heading from her frequent forays to the village. We often meet in the courtyard for croissants and hazelnut coffee from the French bakery.
The Carriage Lamp: Evocative of those bygone, romantic days of horses and carriages, Anna and I, Sherlockians both, will on occasion include original poems, either hers or mine. The most recent will be at the top.
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The Weekly
Shades of P.T. Barnum
P.T. Barnum of circus fame, to whom is attributed the saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” would today feel very much at home in Washington D.C. It is a three ring circus worthy of Barnum and Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth. Indeed he would doubtless be proud that his ilk has taken over the White House and all the parks and monuments of a once free nation. The audacity of the current ringmaster exceeds that of any predecessor, perhaps even of Attila the Hun. The nation’s capital is his construction site, though it looks to all appearances more like a war zone, reduced to rubble. On the South Lawn of the peoples’ house, he has built an amphitheater centered around a caged ring where gladiators met in combat on the birthday of the Greatest Man on Earth, himself. Of course the ancient gladiators were also known to fight wild animals for the amusement of audiences in Rome’s Colosseum. Millenia ago the Empire had its “bread and circuses,” so styled by its contemporary poet Juvenal to mean superficial appeasement “to generate public approval not by excellence in public service or policy but by distraction.” And thus all of human society joins America in gross distraction. In ring one, bloody battle at the White House; in ring two, we host the World Cup, emblematic obsession of Hispanics; and in the center ring punitive tariffs and wars, retribution against your enemies at your own expense. Are you having fun yet? Sadly, yes.
The spectacles have become so brazen, so repugnant, that I am driven to redundancy in calling them dissonant hypocrisy. By definition, hypocrisy is inconsistent, but this audacious hypocrisy goes further: It is a clangorous fakery, feigning to believe what one clearly does not. Examples abound: hosting the World Cup, the aforementioned mania of the Spanish speaking world, while thousands of Latino migrants languish in private prisons; claiming to champion justice, while seeking only retribution; promising to help farmers and small businesses, then sending them into bankruptcy; expressing disdain for foreign wars and giving leave to a bloodthirsty war secretary to go about the world satisfying his foul bloodlust; bragging of improvements to the capital city when the clear intent is to leave it in ruins. The question remaining is whether it is already too late to refute the ghost of P.T. Barnum.
