While reading the newspaper this morning, I came across an article on the negotiations of the debt ceiling. For whatever reason, it reminded me of something I had read in Gulliver's Travels (weird, I know). Looking back at the passage I had in mind, I found the following excerpt about a political theory a man had from Gulliver's voyage to Laputa to be oddly appropriate in this time of political gridlock...
"When the parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance to reconcile them. The method is this. You take a hundred leaders of each party, you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are nearest of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain my be equally divided. Let the occiputs thus cut off be interchanged, applying each to the head of his opposite party-man... he argued thus: that the two half brains being left to debate the mater between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its motion."
Think about it :)
How dare you post this conudrum and make me: a) figure out what you are trying to say and b) develop an active interest in politics when I clearly am a person of the arts. I DO NOT appreciate your snarky remarks about the world and the occasional french vocab word of the day sprinkled throughout your blogs like you would do with seasoning in a tasty soup (and not a French soup at that).
ReplyDeleteA permanent reader to criticize your every word.