At its core the study of metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality, of what exists in the world, what it is like, and how it is ordered.*
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Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there!
He wasn't there again today,
Oh how I wish he'd go away!
William Hughes Mearns
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On November 1, 1950, President Harry S Truman was the target of an assassination attempt by two Puerto Rican nationalists. One of the assailants was shot dead, but a secret service man was also killed. A. J. Liebling in The New Yorker (November 18, 1950) reported that
in Paris, the Communist newspaper Humanité, according to a dispatch in the Times, said right out that the shooting, including the two deaths and three woundings, was an election trick stage-managed by the administration.
I guess we can call this the “Are-You-Going-To-Believe-Me-Or-Your-Lying-Eyes Syndrome,” which has become rife in recent years. Consider the mass murders at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut (December 14, 2012) and at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida (February 14, 2018).
Shortly after each of those tragedies, ghouls began claiming that there were no fatalities. They were fake events. Parents were alleged to have created phony documents to claim that they had lost children. High school survivors were smeared as “crisis actors.” Thankfully, at least a few of the ghouls were found guilty of defamation in civil lawsuits and hit with substantial damages.
The January 6 insurrection at the Capitol building is fast becoming the star example of this syndrome. The gallows-erecting, baseball-bat wielding, Confederate flag waving, bear-repellent spraying, “Hang Mike Spence” yelling mob has morphed into—in the words of Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia—a leisurely group of folks on a “normal tourist visit” to the Capitol. Somehow, though, the images of that day do not match up with this depiction of Washington visitors as drawn by the wonderful Gluyas Williams for The New Yorker issue of March 24, 1951.
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If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see . . .
John Donne
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On the reverse side of the what-you-see-isn’t-really-there coin is the nobody-sees-it-so-it must be true claim. This is the motto, if you will, of the swamp-dwellers of the conspiracy quagmire. A sub-headline of the New York Times put it thus:
As the United States shifted with the anxieties of the 1980s, baseless conspiracy theories about satanic cults committing mass abuse spread around the country.**
Ritual abuses—including child sacrifices—were allegedly taking place across the nation at kindergartens and pre-school facilities. Bodies of the victims were buried, so it was claimed, on the grounds of the schools. So law enforcement dug and dug and found—nothing. But, aha, claimed the accusers, that nothing only proved how subtle the satanists were; they would leave no traces of their fiendish activities. Nothing, therefore, if one was to believe the accusers, was more incriminating than something!
But the 1980s had nothing on us when it comes to conspiracies in which 0>something. The whole election-was-stolen craziness shows that minds are melting down faster than ever (one could blame climate change, but that’s a hoax, right?). The fact that there has been no proven election fraud of any consequence (a few Republicans captured voting twice, the exception) means that the fraud is deeply hidden. The claims of how the alleged fraud was perpetrated, since the ground being dug up is barren (not even fool’s gold), have shifted into the phantasmagoric—offering “strange sights . . . Things invisible to see.” How about Chinese thermostats?*** Italian satellites?****
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In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Sebastian, mistaken by the infatuated Olivia for his disguised (as a man) twin sister, Viola, is lovingly received by that lady, who wishes to marry him. He has no idea what is going on, but he tries to orient himself in reality.
This is the air; that is the glorious sun;
This pearl she gave me, I do feel't and see’t.
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Feel it and see it.
Reject things invisible to see.
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Note: January 6 is Twelfth Night.
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* https://www.mvorganizing.org/what-is-the-study-of-reality-in-the-broadest-sense/
Harold, what diverse frames of reference you have...all that's missing are quotes from Casey Stengel and P.G. Wodehouse...
ReplyDeleteThe only bodies that have actually been found are no good to Republicans! Indigenous children in Canada and black and poor boys in Florida
ReplyDelete