Why you should listen to me, never mind what I wrote yesterday

May 20, 2015

Why you should listen to me, never mind what I wrote yesterday

I wake up from an afternoon doze, because the radio is talking: The situation is complicated – it can’t be more complicated – but let me explain it to you; I can do that, too . . . in terms you may well be able to understand. The kings and queens of smug.

There’s no monopoly on smug, though – not among the media, not among the religious, not among

politicians, not . . . .  No monopoly. There is no one willing to close with my friend Gaspar Stephens’ favorite five words: But I could be wrong. He suggests these be stamped at the end of any pontification.  I suggest we stamp at the beginning these six: From my limited point of view, 

      We don’t do either, we don’t consider doing either, because come right down to it, in the last analysis, in our heart-of-hearts, we know we are right. Occasionally, we’ll feign modesty. Still, our experience trumps everyone else’s, because, well, we’re on the ground, and they – the media, the religious, the litigious, politicians, and cosmologists, all of them – are in the air.

It’s the adolescent’s petulant, “You just don’t understand” in a wisp of intellectual fog, smuggery-smudgery; so the edges aren’t so clear, but our hearts are. Just listen to the beat.