Had things come to this, that the destiny of the nation and world were being decided in gladiatorial combat, one on one? It seemed they had. I trembled at the pressure my knight must feel, rising and walking alone into a hundred million eyes, to find the words to undo the damage from the previous bout.
Turning the car radio on for the drive home from work, I heard the sound of his confident voice. Immediately, the gnawing stopped in the pit of my stomach.
In this age when words fight so many battles for us, modern gladiators wield the hawsers, battleaxes and maces of words to pierce an opponent’s aura, with only invisible armour allowed. How did men get as tough as these two? The opponent throws the word “failure” at my knight like a spiked ball-mace, over and over again. The nimble knight-President dodges it every time.
It is said that the two men stand the same height and of similar build. Yet my knight looked small and nimble, his opponent, tall and looming. The opponent unleashed dark clouds of words, cast spells of words never quite convincingly real, hurled them with too much force, at the same speed every time—automaton-words stripped of their grace, obeying his command.
My knight finds his words in a different place. He borrows them from their nests. He asks them to fly for his cause and they, because winged creatures recognize a winged cause, hasten to do his bidding, which they see is also the bidding of Everyman and Everywoman.
The opponent speaks a dark dialect of economics peppered with numbers of uncertain origin and reference, which can’t be easily deciphered and glances off many heads, but works its incantatory magic in others. Make no mistake, it is magic with which this battle is being waged: my knight’s white magic, borne of a common good; and the other, numerological magic of strange, ambiguous figures.
Politics. We can’t avoid it. It is merely the process of allocating our common resources. But sometimes I’ve begun to wonder if there are simply too many of us now. Or if not that, then what is the solution to our increasing polarization? What we need is a change of heart, which can only come from God.
I’ve described here what I see. My white may be your black. Even if that is so, perhaps we can agree on the last point: what we need is a change of heart, which can only come from God.
