Liberalism is a Profane Labyrinth
Liberalism is the most perverse of all mazes, in that it succeeds in constructing what the first principles of architecture declare impossible: it makes itself a labyrinth without walls.
You are at demonstration marching down a residential neighborhood composed of winding roads woody terraced-gardens. The yards are lightly dappled with oh-so-unobjectionable signs, viz. “In our America, Love Wins!” and “Immigrants are Welcome Here!” in front of gently garrisoned McMansions.
You’ve been marching a long time, and though the demonstrators keep mentioning an ultimate location where speeches and sit-ins and human blockades and righteous, unmediated action are scheduled to take place, there seems to be no consensus as to the time of arrival, or even the precise route.
How long have you been marching?
Hold on, haven’t you seen that Honda Civic with the sprinkler-glistened Obama ’12 bumper sticker before? Or are you thinking of an ’08 decal on the back of a Tesla…and this black rose chalk drawing on the sidewalk—you drew it yourself, at the beginning of the march, or was premonition of yesterday, or a memory of tomorrow?
How long have you been marching?
How long…
[A Hurricane is blowing in from Paradise.]
Somebody’s Dad is selling boxes of ‘80s nostalgobilia to make room in his man-cave. You pick up a newspaper: the Headline is occupied by the Iran-Contra Affair. The last three culs-de-sac all curved the same way…a McGovern poster, and underneath it an FDR pin…the wreckage of a barricade lying unremarked-upon in the gutter.
Your destination is right there, you can see the tent-poles over the treeline, just across two, maybe three lawns, through the hedgerow and over the creek where a couple Spanish anarchists are trying to dislodge a long abandoned a cannon…
But no!, everyone’s already heading back the way you’d just come. “What if we go right at the roundabout instead of left?” “that one there?” “no, the one at the base of the hill, where they are crucifying the zealots—”
No matter. Next time round everyone else is bound to to figure it out. And the time after that, they’ll figure out that everyone else has already figured it out too, or at least, you hope so. The winds alternate, hot and cold, damp with the taste of ozone and cruel optimism. (How long have you been marching?)