2005-08-25 - 1:44 p.m.
SOMEBODY MUST WALK THE PLANK
By Peter Fredson
August 25, 2005
There is the classic story about the moron who watched a suspenseful movie 10 different times because he hoped to see a different outcome. This is the same story about a person who watched a very close Super Bowl game in which a football missed the goal posts by inches then saw it in reruns because this time the ball might go in. And the story parallels one of a little boy dressed in Superman outfit who jumps out of the bedroom window thinking he can soar out into space, while still nursing a broken leg from trying to fly off of his tree house.
Perseverance on a wrong course will not bring rewards. The Captain of the cruise vessel should not disregard warnings of ice ahead and go partying. The Captain of a million barrel oil tanker should not fall asleep at the wheel thinking that god will steer him clear of all obstacles. Charting a course destined to fail to reach a destination is lunacy but careless helmsmanship merits 16 lashes.
Somehow those stories remind me of President George Bush. He wants to “stay the course” and keep repeating the same failed strategy and policy, over and over, because it makes him feel he is getting somewhere, and can report that “everything is going well” when that works only for lunatics in an asylum. They may be happy thinking they are Napoleon or Jesus or can fly but in real life their thinking is disastrous.
Perhaps that is the trouble. Bush keeps confusing reality with his world of fancy, a world in which he talks to his god and in return is given all the power and riches of the world. He and Karl Rove believe they have charted a good course, while in reality the ship is making circles. First Mate Dick Cheney is dancing the horn pipe, and other sailors are trying to calculate the riches that will come into their hands when the ship makes port.
“Staying a course” may not be good strategy but may become “courting disaster.” Staying a course may indicate that there is no discernable destination in mind, but simply aimless drifting. Staying a course may indicate a Captain troubled by mental illness, drugs, whimsy, incompetence, or inability to read the waves, wind, stars, and other signs that experienced navigators rely upon.
The Captain may be likeable, smile a lot, hug people, talk grandiloquently about the bravery of the crew, strut, swagger about the deck and probably he will be one of few people in the lifeboat when the ship strikes the shoals or the reef and both ship and crew are lost.
Bush should be told that the original meaning of the phrase “To Stay the Course” means to STOP going on a wrong heading, to look at the compass, consult a reliable chart, and get back on the right course. But he insists on going steadily with fanfare, trumpets and applause, along the wrong course, secure that his likeability will relieve him of all responsibility for disaster, that his ship’s owners will still back him for sinking the ship, and that no court of inquiry will be established as it would condemn far too many people of complicity in the shipwreck.
As the ship sinks, all of the sycophant media will report that everyone on board is having a good time, laughing, dancing, and happy as larks on board the “unsinkable” Titanic.
