(in the time of chimpanzees)

We had a father, who was a failure as a father and even a failure as a man, in spite of many manly qualities. Most especially …

The System did not work for him. He did not work for the System.

So, he never had much money. What he did have he spent badly, and his wife and children suffered for that, and for other reasons too, none of which reflected well on his character.

He had little proverbs he used to quote ad nauseum.

The one I’m thinking of was usually prefaced by him saying that it was invented by his parents.

In his telling, his parents spake to him thus:

“Well, Lawrence, if nothing else you can always serve as a bad example!”

Haw hardy haw.

In the end, it was no joke at all. The prophecy was precisely fulfilled.

He and his life were exactly that bad example, and amounted to nothing else ever.

He lives in our collective memories only as a cautionary tale.

None of us were stupid and we listened very carefully to the cautions in that paternal story.

***

Then one bright shiny day a bright shiny new adoptive father suddenly appeared as if by magic.

The System worked very well for this man, The Commander.

He worked for It, too.

In return It gave him not only plenty of money, but a trophy besides. Promotions and honors. A great big house unhappily called The Battleship, in which to abide, and entertain.

A modest secular glory. A bust in bronze, in front of some library.

Finally he ended up running a college for them, one that trained pilots and other kinds of aviation-adjacent worker bees to work in support of Itself, by which I mean in support of the self-perpetuating System, elsewise called Empire.

All of this was 40 years ago.

But in generational terms, in human hearts, it was only yesterday.

***

I was impelled along this line of thinking by something Keaton Weiss said recently.

He didn’t say it well, so I’m not going to link it or even quote it exactly, but the germ of the idea was a pure brilliant insight.

In my role as belletrist, I’m going to polish it with a purpose. In paraphrase, it goes like this.

“Those for whom the System works–those whom It advantages–are bent by It to see It favorably, and to wave away any discussion of Its potential faults, and even (perhaps especially) suggestions about Its fundamental unfairness and immorality. Even Its evil.”

(“Well, the Democratic Capitalist American System isn’t perfect, you slobs; It’s just more perfect than all the others.”)

Once that much is seen, it seems so obvious, and so vast in implication.

***

The first father, the bad example, hated the System which never advantaged him …

going so far as to convert to a religion in which the System was the fruit of all evil, literally ruled by Satan.

Unfortunately it was also a religion of great moral timidity, and so while it encouraged its adherents to stay far away from The World and to participate only minimally in the System, it also preached the importance of rendering Caesar’s things to Caesar most of the time.

Thus, while most of the beliefs given to him by the religion worked for him, they gave him no legitimate outlet for his rage against the System … against the Devil. He … rendered, and he raged hotter still.

The rage came out instead through battering his wife, and abusing his children.

Unsurprisingly, when they grew up, none of them chose to continue practicing the timid and self-contradicting religion.

Besides which, since he was a natively conservative Republican, they all became, more or less, liberal Democrats. (But not, god forbid, revolutionaries.)

And most of them followed the new and improved commander father into the secular creed that worshiped the System, and preached the gospel of going to college, and working within It, and reaping the advantages that cooperating with It brings.

And of course defending It from the slanders of all hérétiques, great and small, whether those slanders were accurate, or could be dismissed as quackery; merest conspiracy.

Possibly even no more than sour grapes, whimpered by losers, don’tcha know.

***

Sí, cariño, soy un perdedor.

Ahogándose con las astillas.

Things are gonna change.

I can feel it.