The Monkey With His Hand In A Jar

There’s something about the company you keep that determines where your thoughts will go, and it’s hard to make use of your higher intellectual functions in the presence of a monkey. In fact, it’s often too great a task to simply keep your dignity. No great and lofty drama can be acted within a circus tent, nor will Chopin’s Preludes ever be played by an organ grinder.

And so those who study matters a little more seriously than some are prone to becoming easily vexed when a monkey arrives on the scene of a serious discussion. I’ve seen it time and time again where the person of greater learning is frustrated to the point of utter exasperation by the behavior of a creature with no sense of decorum. The serious and the high-minded can have their egos destroyed by their inability to understand that so many can prefer the actions of a monkey to their staid and measured pronouncements. Such is their folly that they are incapable of seeing that the monkey is appreciated precisely because he is capable of taking the starch out of the collars of those who attempt to sit so staid and complacently above the fray.

In short, a monkey has a knack for making monkeys of us all. And that is not totally a bad thing. A monkey in our midst is a good way of keeping our egos in check. It keeps our grandiose theories from flying too far away from reality. It takes us out of our comfort zone. The monkey keeps our feet on the ground, keeps us rooted, forces us to focus on how healthy our roots are while we’d prefer to be busily losing ourselves in sophistry and pretty but untested notions of how life should be.

A lot of people were feeling good about themselves for the last 8 years. We had elected an African-American president who was well spoken, photogenic, and relatively scandal-free. He spoke about hope and change but more than anything else he was the personification of hope and change because he was the embodiment of the mountaintop speech Martin Luther King Junior gave those many years back. Martin knew that he would never live to see the day but we as a nation had finally arrived.

Except that nothing is ever that simple and we never really arrive. Every mountain we climb merely gives us a brief glimpse of the road ahead that we need to traverse. We’ve forgotten that. We’ve foolishly believed that everything was right with the world during the reign of Barack Obama.

We were wrong. The monkey exposed our self-satisfied illusions about ourselves. Even now we don’t want to admit it but the monkey had a lot to work with. We made his job easy.

But here’s the thing. A monkey can’t make a decent human being look too bad for too long. A monkey will reveal the inner you, beyond the image you project to the world. Put a basically good person in the room and he’ll find a healthy way to interact with a monkey. But put a person with issues in the same room with a hyperactive simian and that person will blow his top.

That’s what I see happening now. The pat storyline of liberals everywhere is being put to the test and you’re not responding very well. The monkey is exposing your hypocrisy and it’s rattled you so much you’re no longer in charge of your own emotions. This amuses those who are watching, makes you look to be the butt of the monkey’s behavior in the eyes of the crowd, and everybody enjoys a circus where the monkey gets the best of the clowns. When the monkey gets you to act like a monkey yourself, the monkey wins.

You’re playing the monkey’s game. Instead of using your reason you have fallen into monkey behavior. You’re showing the world you’re no better than the monkey and it looks even worse on you, because the monkey never pretended to be something better than a monkey.

There’s an ancient story about how to catch a monkey. You place a piece of fruit in a jar with an opening just large enough for a monkey to get his hand in but not big enough for him to get his hand out while holding the fruit. The monkey wants that piece of fruit so bad, he doesn’t have enough sense to let it go even when he is about to be captured.

That is how I see much of the opposition to Trump right now. Your hatred is so intense you can’t let go of it, even though it’s hurting you to hold on. Your hatred for the monkey is such that he’s got you acting just like him. And there’s nothing the monkey enjoys more than having a partner in his monkey games. And the crowd looking on is mightily amused too.

It’s time to let go the anger, it’s time to regain your composure and stop letting the monkey dictate your behavior. You must be in charge, not the monkey, but in order to do that you must show the audience that you have the sort of integrity that cannot be sullied by a mere monkey.

It’s fun to watch a hypocrite squirm as the lie is put to him by the monkey. But it is no fun for the audience once they realize the victim of the monkey will not surrender his dignity.

It is up to you to elevate the drama that is being played out. You must appeal to the audience’s sympathies and logic, show by your actions that the causes you care for are noble causes. You must not stoop to monkey behavior, and you must be quick to call out those who do, even if they support the same causes as you. You must call out people who body shame the President of the United States of America, both because you respect the office and because you oppose body shaming in all incidences. You must call out those who imply a homosexual relationship between the monkey and foreign heads of state, both because it does not deal with the issues and especially because you would not tolerate trying to shame someone because of their sexuality if it were anyone else.

You’ve claimed the moral high ground, it is up to you to prove yourselves worthy of it. We already know the path the monkey has taken. I suggest you don’t try to follow him, he has had a lifetime of practice at it.

Let's Build A Wall

Things were different in my grandfather’s day. Back then, when someone wanted to employ immigrants to drive down wages for American workers, they did it the legal way, by getting politicians elected who would increase the immigration quotas. It’s not fair that we punish those who buy politicians the old-fashioned way by allowing people to hire illegal immigrants.

And so I make what may sound like an unkind suggestion, but one I feel is necessary. I believe anyone found employing illegal aliens should be rounded up and immediately deported to Panama, The Cayman Islands, or whatever country they claim as their corporation’s nation of origin in order to avoid paying income taxes. For simplicity sake, let’s just send them all to the Cayman Islands. That way we can build a 50 foot wall around it. And make them pay for it! And we’ll make them pay living wages to those who build it too, not the $3 an hour under the table they were paying their illegal employees who were too afraid to speak out.

After all, it’s not right that those who hire illegal aliens are being treated better than our veterans. After fighting wars overseas that make for even more people fleeing their countries in hopes of finding a better life in the U.S of A., our soldiers come home to find their jobs are taken by those same refugees. Meanwhile, our government is paying those same companies who hire illegal immigrants here at home to rebuild the countries we blew up at their behest. And like as not they’re not using American labor to rebuild Saddam’s prisons.

Don’t tell me Americans won’t do the jobs immigrants do, it’s just a matter of how much money they want in return for their work. Let me explain the law of supply and demand to those who don’t get it: the less supply, the greater the demand. The less workers available, the greater the wages those workers are able to demand. Of course, those who hire illegals know it, that’s why they’re willing to open the immigration floodgates in order to reduce wages.

They say they can’t find anyone here that is willing to pick fruit or clean their pools for them, but guess what? If they paid enough, I’d gladly do it. Raise the wages enough and there will be people willing to do any job. Just look at how many attractive young women are willing to marry wrinkly old billionaires. It’s the magic of the market place. Of course, if they pay the pool boy too much they might not be able to afford more than one swimming pool per mansion, but nobody’s promised anything in this life.

It hurts me to see people tampering with the magic of the market place. After all, the market is only able to work its magic when it is allowed to act freely. The market is sacred. It is the source of all that is pure and good in the world. Flooding a nation with excess labor is equivalent to the Federal Reserve flooding the market with un-backed currency: it is destined to crash the system eventually.

So what do you think, Donald? Isn’t that a better idea than trying to trace every Western Union payment sent by all the less-than-minimum-wage workers in the country? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to build a wall around the Caymans than the entire Mexican border? Wouldn’t the Cayman Islands be a nice place to vacation after a tiring presidential campaign?

Because you know Donald Trump has made some serious money hiring illegal immigrants rather than the American workers whose vote he’s got wrapped around his little finger. Construction and hotels? Nah, no illegals involved in those trades.

I’d be interested to know how much money Trump puts in his pocket for every illegal worker he got to replace an American one. I’m guessing the average would be around twenty grand each per year, which doesn’t include the overall dampening of wages for everyone else. And I’m guessing we’re looking at thousands of workers, because Donald Trump has his fingers in a lot of pies. We’re talking tens of millions of dollars. That may not be a lot of money to Trump, but I’ll bet it’s plenty to a veteran who’s looking for work.

Come to think of it, if those who hire illegal immigrants are so concerned about saving money, I’m sure it would be cheaper to deport them somewhere like Siberia or Somalia. With the money we’d save, we could make that fence 100 feet tall!

The Monkey In The Mirror

In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation And Empire, a genetic freak known only as The Mule seems to arise from out of nowhere and manages to take control over the better part of the galaxy. Similarly, a man who I’ll refer to as The Monkey has managed in the last year to capture the Republican nomination for President despite having been dismissed by the prognosticators of the media. Whether he too is a genetic freak is an issue I shall leave to others to decide.

But like The Mule, no one seems to be able to account for the trajectory of The Monkey, nobody can explain how someone so seemingly lacking in positive human attributes has been able to have the success he has enjoyed. Everyone has their pet theories as to how The Monkey has managed to achieve the nearly impossible while breaking all the rules, but none of the explanations seem convincing. More often when people attempt to exposit a theory it is merely a matter of finger pointing.

In Foundation And Empire, it turns out The Mule has the ability to control the minds of others, and perhaps that might help explain The Monkey. Somehow when The Monkey’s minions look at him they don’t see the obnoxious, hateful, bloviating simian, they see what The Monkey wants them to see. Well, actually, even his minions have to admit that he’s an unlikeable character, and yet they are able to see past the gruff exterior to the warm, caring individual that the rest of society does not see. Like a lonely woman who wants to feel loved, the supporters of The Monkey ignore all the warnings their friends raise and prefer instead to see the knight in shining armor their hearts cry out for. True love, after all, is a matter of the heart, not the head.

What then accounts for the unprecedented success had by The Monkey? The truth might be quite obvious and yet so unpleasant that we would rather not admit to it. The liberals want to blame the conservatives and the conservatives want to blame the liberals. Indeed, everyone’s pointing their fingers at someone else. But nobody seems to want to take a hard look in the mirror. Maybe The Monkey isn’t some random occurrence or the cause of some other party. Perhaps we, individually and collectively, are to blame for the ascendance of The Monkey. Perhaps we have somehow allowed ourselves to slide down somewhat on the evolutionary family tree.

What would make a narcissistic capitalist monkey popular? Perhaps it is due to the fact that we have been permitting narcissistic capitalist monkeys to tell our stories for us for the last thirty years, beginning around the time of Alex P. Keaton. Perhaps it is because we have been told over and over again if you are good you will become rich and if you are rich you must be smart. Perhaps the values of free market media have finally overtaken the values humanity has lived with up until the time television took over as the voice of authority in every home.

Maybe we have become a nation of narcissistic monkeys ourselves, whose only purpose in life is to get more for ourselves and not worry about the results of our actions. After all, are we not always being urged to satisfy our gluttonous cravings for anything advertisers are selling? Isn’t it our patriotic duty to be selfish and arrogant?

Perhaps the Republican Party is the natural home to the narcissistic capitalist, but the opposition is merely a kinder, gentler, more hypocritical breed of monkey. Those who claim they have been the alternative to the narcissistic capitalists have not been averse to eating from their hands whenever it is outstretched to them. We are all of us living in our own little jungle, not willing to contemplate the larger world outside.

For a couple of generations now, we’ve been living a sort of delusion, a mindset sold to us by advertising executives. It’s a delusion that tells us we don’t have to think hard or grow old. We try to live this lie by doing the only thing that is in our control, refusing to grow up. Growing up means accepting that we as adults have certain societal norms we should live up to and sometimes apologizing for our behavior when we have failed. It means taking responsibility for our own actions. Growing up means grappling with difficult questions and finding solutions. But we have become a society that will no longer admit that we are ever wrong or responsible for anything we’ve done.

The Monkey will never admit wrongdoing. That’s part of the narcissistic package. Or perhaps that’s sociopathy, I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist. The point is, we live in a world nowadays where nobody feels responsible for anything and nobody feels like they have to set the good example. Everybody is worried about their rights and nobody about their responsibilities. It’s no wonder why we can convince ourselves that a monkey is worthy of leading our country nowadays. It’s no wonder we can overlook his many and pronounced flaws.

A society of monkeys doesn’t have to worry about the long-term implications of their behavior, after all, we’re just monkeys. To monkeys, the Middle East exists for no other reason than to be a holding tank for the oil that will eventually be consumed by our vehicles. Central America is there as a place for us to vacation or as factory labor to make our clothing.

If we’re monkeys, all we have to do is select an alpha-monkey to subject our will and our decision-making abilities to. Of course, if you know anything about primate behavior, you’ll know there are some rather unpleasant aspects to subjecting yourself to a dominate ape, but being monkeys we really don’t care to speculate on such matters. Monkeys aren’t known for their dignity or self-respect.

We can pretend if we like that The Monkey is an aberration, sprung upon us by random chance. We can believe that we only have to defeat The Monkey in his attempt to win the presidency and disaster will be averted, that we will have confronted and won the important battle of our age. But if The Monkey is not some fluke, if The Monkey is merely a symptom of the monkey within all of us, a symptom of a monkey virus that has been spreading in our society for thirty or more years, then the defeat of one monkey, even if he be the alpha monkey, will do little to change the path we are on.

There is a voice inside us that says we merely have to turn out in November and cast our vote for the lesser of two evils, that everything else we attempt to do is not merely wrong but will end up helping The Monkey. It is a tempting voice, a voice for the status quo. It tells us that we are basically fine and all we have to do is overcome the enemy that sprang from nowhere and can be cast back into the abyss by following the accepted wisdom. This voice speaks to our laziness of thought, our unwillingness to take a hard look at ourselves or the position we now find ourselves in. It speaks to the monkey within us all. But before you decide, take a look at The Monkey, and ask yourself if that is really what you want to be.