carnival and politics




CARNIVAL AND POLITICS



In the Roman Catholic church calendar, January 6 is the Feast of the Epiphany;  in the secular imagination of New Orleans, it is the beginning of carnival.  On Wednesday, February 26, we cease our revels, adorn ourselves with ashes, and repent.  We Catholics are lucky.  We can move seamlessly from sin to salvation.  No doubt, non-Catholics have the option of doing likewise  As the pious among us whisper, "God is good."



Like Countee Cullen, "I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind," but I must marvel in 2020 that "His awful hand" punishes us with the juxtaposition of carnival and politics.



Carnival is a season of lush excess, satire and malice, bold transgressions, and a few practices best left unnamed to protect the guilty.  It is an opportunity to consider that in the Age of Trump carnival and politics share alacrity in the mismanagement of the rule of law, squandering reason for nonsense in dramatic rituals.  We have two sides of a toxic plastic coin, two sides of signifying.  Whether politics and carnival are fundamentally comic or tragic is a dark matter for the ears and eyes of any participant/observer to determine.  Pray that the majority of American citizens make life-enhancing decisions in turbulent year of uncertainty.  Pray, but don't expect  miracles.  Our inadequate educations regarding technologies natural and people-made and our  love affairs with our egos and social media preclude manifestations  of tranquility, harmony, peace. Revenge and deep investment in the absurd (the indifference of as much universe as we currently know) keep us perpetually remote from miracles.  I doubt not that we inhabit a judicious human condition.



No  doubt, we can derive empowering insights about the absence of justice (an ironic social construction) in daily life from reading Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, the unexpurgated text of The Satyricon by Petronius, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Mask of the Red Death," and  Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" ----or a similar gathering of literary oddities. Paradox. All is paradox. We are stuck with the perfect interchangeability of American politics and the carnival.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            January 6, 2020

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