The Umpteenth Dog
I lost hope yesterday, briefly. I have been raging with an incandescent fire for some time now over [waves hands helplessly] all the things, but especially lately the dismantling of the federal government. For all its many [many many] faults, there are so many who depend on it, on the distribution of our tax dollars — *our* tax dollars because the thieves-in-chief pay next to nothing into it. By us, for us, one of the few aspects of the convoluted system that is still worth upholding. Transferring from the haves to the have-nots even as those jerks work to increase the latter with inordinate speed.
It wasn’t even a big thing. It’s easy to rail against the big obvious injustices. It was the shin kick of something so small, so petty, but so indicative of this whole stramash: a podunk politician in a red state submitting a bill to rename Greenland ‘Red White, and Blueland’ and beg the asshole-in-chief to ‘make a deal’ for it. It’s patently absurd, but that’s not what fell like a sucker punch. It’s the piddling craven impulse.
It’s the umpteenth dog.
A dog steals a sausage and runs off with it. His pal is right beside him and chomps on it, too. Then more dogs follow and soon they’re all running in the same direction. When the umpteenth dog joins he feels confident he knows which way the pack is running and also that he is part of it. Not the central part because those are the dogs that will be caught and punished.
But we are many and they are few.
It’s the arrogant cowardice of the umpteenth dog that never fails to revolt me. The petty vindictiveness of the spineless creature who thinks he’s safe in the crowd. Who thinks he can get away with anything because there are too many dogs to catch all of them. Because the ‘move fast and break things’ crowd is getting all the attention because their crimes are of the highest level, the umpteenth dogs think they can sneak in their petty little knife twists on anybody in their path. It’s like the old cartoon where a boss yells at a business man, who goes home and yells at his wife, who screams at the child, who punishes the dog.
That’s why people say punch up, don’t punch down. Resist easy hierarchies. But the umpteenth dog assumes he is safe at the back of the pack and he can get away with biting a leg because ‘they’ will go after the big dogs. And when that happens, like the cowards they are, the umpteenth dogs will run back home and hide behind their neighbours and friends and family, who’ll say they didn’t mean any harm, they were just caught up in the madness of the pack.
But we are many and they are few.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Mary of Nimmegen (Mariken van Nieumeghen) who – before Faust – made a Faustian bargain to learn the seven liberal arts. Yes, it has to do with the destruction of my institution, but also with the denigration of the liberal arts (and arts!) in general (watching as the UK slo-mo falls into all the same shit that we are in now is both frustrating and sorrowful). In Eric Colledge’s translation of the original Dutch medieval play, she shows off her powers of rhetoric (one of the original liberal arts) in a pub speaking on the theme, ‘Ignorant men are the destruction of art.’ It is a beautiful speech, but pearls before swine as the devil One-Eyed Moenen has her deliver it in a tavern where drunkness and violence assure that no one will pay the least bit of attention.
They say in the proverb that through art grows the heart, but I say that is a lying fable, for should some great artist appear, those who are unskilled and know not the first thing about art will make their opinion prevail everywhere, and artists will be reduced to beggary. Always it is the flatterer who is preferred, and always artists suffer such harm, and ignorant men are the destruction of art. (363)
There’s a long history of that particular cri du cœur. And yet: great artists are sometimes celebrated. Sure, sometimes long after they’re dead (I hear you, William Blake; I see you, Leonora Carrington). Sometimes, an artist can catch enough of a favourable wind to sail into consciousness even when the audience dislikes or cannot comprehend their work. Art sustains us, especially through hard times. It allows us to visualise the world to be, the one we can make.
Because we are many and they are few.
Unfortunately, they are few, but they are currently in the halls of power. These are men who have never made anything in their lives, let alone art. That’s why they despise it so. They feel the power of art but don’t understand it. They think if they just break and shit on everything, it will make it go away and we will worship them. No, never.
Tom Gauld’s brilliant cartoon for New Scientist.
Because we know that the umpteenth dog is weak and a coward. That’s why it’s where we need to focus some attention. Because they are weak, because they are more easily driven off, and because the pack shrinks bit by bit. And when there’s just a few dogs left, they will turn on each other as they always do. They snap at each other in the vain hope that we won’t get them all. And when they sadly contemplate the bare walls of their bunker (or let’s hope, prison cell), they’ll wonder why they couldn’t hold onto it all, why so many were against them.
Because we are many and they are few. And we protect one another.
Grab a pitchfork. Make art. Lift up each other. Because these dogs won’t go away on their own. Need some suggestions of small but doable efforts? Here you go!
