While I was sitting on the couch in my office this morning, I saw Bella, our miniature Australian Sheperd, walking down the hallway toward the laundry room. I called out her name as she walked past my doorway, but she didn’t come back. That was unusual for her and I got up, only to discover that she had peed on the rug that runs the length of the hallway.
She has enough problems without me yelling at her so I just got out the roll of paper towel and began to sop up the stain as best I could.
It occurred to me, as I was joined by my wife who used a spray bottle of stain neutralizer, that I’d rather be engaged in cleaning up after Bella, who has traumatic anxiety and intestinal issues, than dwelling on the concerns expressed in an online newsletter from Heather Cox Richardson that I had just read.
Her post this morning dug into the backstory of the Administration’s visit to Saudi Arabia, which was featured on the mainstream news last night. An assembly of the rich and powerful were congratulating one another for the vast amounts of capital investment the Saudis will be making in America. Massive investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) specifically touted.
In her article, Richardson explained the significance of Elon Musk’s presence at these meetings, after his relative absence from the political stage in recent weeks. She related it to Musk’s supercomputer installation in Memphis, Tennessee. This million square foot complex is powered by 35 giant methane-burning generators that are contaminating the air-quality in the nearby black community; but that doesn’t account for Musk’s presence in Saudi Arabia.
What will Musk’s supercomputer be working on? Richardson connected it to the personal information that DOGE (the so-called Department of Economic Efficiency) has been collecting in gigantic downloads, from the main places that store personal information about everyone in America, Social Security and the IRS. And what better than AI algorithms running on a supercomputer to identify the preferences, weaknesses and accessible wealth revealed in the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans?
The Saudi’s are meeting with American billionaires and the President’s sons (the showroom managers for his companies), as well as with Musk, the unelected, richest man in the world, whose heavy investment in AI can now be linked to his chainsaw massacre of Federal government databases.
After reading that, wouldn’t you have happily turned to toweling up the dark splotch of pee on the carpet outside your office door?
In another move of self-protection, instead of dwelling on the current state of the world, I’ve been remembering a book I read by Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows. I especially remember with affection the illustrated version I read to my kids.
I imagine I’m not the only one looking for an allegory to our current world situation in which things end happily.
Wind in the Willows has a cast of characters who live by a river and, as in other animal stories, their daily lives are not so different from our own. If you’re like me, you’d rather share a coffee with Rat or Mole than with Toad, whose impetuous enthusiasms prevent him from really noticing anyone else’s concerns.
While Toad is out gallivanting with his latest expensive toy, a criminal band of weasels are plotting to take over Toad Hall, the main symbol of wealth in this riverside society. After they storm and occupy Toad Hall, it takes heroic Badger to inspire the community to rise to the defense of their neighbor Toad; and they manage to take back his manor.
In the decades since reading Wind in the Willows to my kids, I have become more aware how fragile are the qualities that allow a society to preserve a spirit of concern for all its members. When enough people lose the capacity to keep that spirit alive in themselves, then the weasels are bound to try to take anything not defended for themselves.
Most weasels are not sophistical criminals. They just want Toad’s lifestyle for themselves and have no problem invading whatever citadels they find unguarded.
Rat and Mole are the main characters in this story. But Badger is the bold hero who rouses the community to action, in order to take Toad Manor back for its owner. After that has happened, Toad is grateful that the community came to his defense. He seems wiser and calmer as he realizes that his true wealth is living in a supportive community.
We need both that supportive community and at least a few people who are willing to risk their own safety in defense of its preservation. When I remember Badger and how he inspired the other animals to run into the bullets of the weasels who had occupied Toad Manor, I think of two republican senators: John McCain and Liz Chaney. McCain crossed the aisle at a time when no one else was willing to do so and thereby saved the Affordable Care Act. Liz Chaney took a criminal opportunist to task for his attempt to hold onto power against the will of the majority; and now she is getting death threats.
Our fragile democracy needs legislators to risk their political positions and defend a society that is under attack by a band of weasels who have had time to do more than plot their take over. They have moved on to consolidating their ‘ownership’, as if they are entitled to all the loot they can carry.
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