Caustic Care 6/25/09

Fools are more to be feared than the wicked.

Queen Christiana
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Don't stand around outside. Come on in.
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There are many sorts of fools simple ones, old ones and great ones, and all of them are dangerous, in way or another.

We all know those who are capable of making some totally daft decision that adversely affects themselves, their families, their town or their country. The wise are hard to find. Fools are a dime a dozen. Foolishness is everywhere. You don't have to look very far. "What fools these mortal be" wrote Shakespeare.

This morning I was amused at the news item about the 2009 National Conference - Building The New Majority where the subject was making English the official national language. The large banner over their heads read 2009 National Conferenece, (Conferen[e]c). If they want English to be the national language in this multi-lingual nation the least they can do is learn to spell it correctly.

It reminds me of the time the Senate was trying President Clinton. The pens they all pompously signed in with read Untied States Senate and not tied together properly it certainly was.

Let's face it, we are all capable of foolishness sometimes, some of us most of the time. If I started listing examples of my own foolery there's no telling how long this entry would be. So i won't, thank you.

Some unknown author wrote "Fools rush in where fools have been before." One of the purposes of regrets, as nasty as they can be, is to remind us of the stupid things we did so that we will remember and not do them again. So then why do we keep fooling ourselves, flopping and stacking up regrets? Maybe it's because we don't trust our own foolishness, don't believe that we were really wrong. Go ahead and touch the iron to see if it's hot. It won't burn you this time like it did before.

Ah, but what if you have to confront a fool, especially one in authority? That's a sticky problem. If you're a loyal worker you go around picking up the pieces that your boss leaves behind and agree to ignore his foolish fiats. If you're not a loyal worker you might point out his nonsense to him and then visit the unemployment office. I worked for one of those once, who shall not be named. I finally quit the job and moved on, just to get away from his idiotic bungling.

And what if the fool gets into the position of running the country. It happens. It's a potential disaster. One can only hope there are enough levelheaded people in the government who can say "How clever" and then work their way around and out of the danger. We have no way of knowing how many anonymous civil servants of many nations have quietly slipped past the brainless barriers imposed by some simple minded monarch.

But there's another sort of fool. I have long believed that one of the things wrong with this dangerous world is the demise of the court jester, the "allowed fool" hired by the king to keep him honest.

In olden times if a simple jester stepped over the line he could be whipped or hung. But an Allowed Fool was free to utter anything that was relevant to the situation, in the court or out of it. Rulers depended upon them to point out their and other people's foolishness, which they did with wit and comical sarcasm. The court jester was often smarter than anyone else around. The court fool was dangerous to pretentiousness, dishonesty, artificiality, and cant.

Now just imagine what the world would be like if there were such a humorist on the payroll and in the presence of every monarch, premiere, prime minister, president dictator, field marshal, CEO and chairman. We very well might be laughing instead of bombing.

DB - Vagabond Journeys.
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May there be bubbles of joy in your day.
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