Not your preschoolers Little Bunny Foo-Foo,/Image: Into Film, intofilm.com.
Oh, jolly good, Spread Your Right Wings (SYRW) readers to see you back in the library again–it seems like it happens every week at around the same time that we find you with your clutching your hands behind your back, looking up at the books in our dusty- musty-smelling library, the leather chairs, crackling fire, and even the smoke from our pipe all conspiring to provide a toasty, almost magical environment, Ah! We see you’re in the section of the library where we keep fictional titles. And what’s that you have there..? Watership Down by Richard Adams!
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I Can Feel It
Adams’ Watership Down, an anthropomorphic fiction work, in which animals take on the qualities of humans, tells the story of a group of rabbits who flee the warren they call home as construction-related development by humans threatens to erase it. The reader of this riveting tale then joins the bunnies on the adventures they experience as they find a new, safer place in the world in which to live. It was published in 1972 and instantly became a bestseller, entered the hearts of readers all over the world, and eventually took a place in the popular-fiction-cum-literature canon.
In Watership, Fiver, a scrawny, fidgety rabbit prone to prophetic visions, sounds the alarm that the warren is in grave danger and the whole lot of rabbits who live there must flee immediately. As the book opens, Hazel and Fiver attempt to warn the head rabbit of their colony that the warren is in grave imminent danger, and they must all flee. Only Hazel and some other savvy rabbit friends of Fiver’s take him seriously.
As we at SYRW reread this treasure last week, a sudden, unnerving realization slapped us in the face, like Melania’s hand slapped Donald’s when he tried to hold it on the day of his inauguration: is Fiver the small group of Republican congresspeople, pundits, and politicians who have been sounding endless alarms that its dangerous, ill-advised, even morally and ethically wrong to valorize, prop up, and follow Trump? We wanted him, but does that mean we have to act like the stubborn head rabbit that Fiver and Hazel tried to warn and encouraged to flee, staying put despite dire alerts to do the opposite?
We Alt-right-ers continue to support and cheer on Trump, justifying and even over-praising every action he takes day after day even though we know we shouldn’t. If Fiver is to be believed, we’re being wrongly dismissive, scornful, and injudicious in whitewashing all his horrible behavior. And also if Fiver is to be believed, in doing so we invite, even hasten, our own demise.
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A Meeting of Minds
“Before such people can act together, a kind of telepathic feeling has to flow through them and ripen to the point when they all know that they are ready to begin,” writes Adams of the rabbits in Watership.
Perhaps we on the right should consider ourselves to have reached that time. All signs from Republican politicians, the right-wing news media, Alt-pundits, and those many Alt-ers we at SYRW know personally–including ourselves–point to an altogether different reality. Our collective lot seems still to be extolling the virtues of Trump, failing to see Trump’sbehavior for the march toward authoritarianism many Fivers on the right are telling us it is, and continuing to believe Trump is the hero and savior of the white middle class.
We at SYRW are getting the sinking feeling that we were wrong about him, that he’s made a fool of us all this time and continues to, and he can’t and won’t deliver on any of the extravagant promises he made to us, Even worse, we’re starting to think we signed our own cultural death warrant by selecting this man as our leader.
Oh, listen to us! Being hysterical, alarmist, unhinged bunnies, like Fiver, again! We’re sure we’re just overreacting, letting the naysayers, wet blankets, and “haters,” as the Millenials say, ruin our fun. We’re in charge again, after eight years of rule by a liberal black man, and our enemies can’t stand it! We’re not going to let them, whether they’re Republican or not, screw this up for us.
Trump’s administration and all the wonderful, fabulous, awesome things he and it do every day are just the beginning of our Alt-taking-back of what we think is rightfully ours: this nation, governing it, and lording it over all those whiny factions who call themselves “marginalized groups.”
Just Ask the Alpha
When Fiver and Hazel go to Threarah, the HBIC of the warren, to voice their belief that the entire bunny bunch is doomed and must leave presently, he is unmoved, even annoyed. He says this:
“But now, my dear fellows, let’s just think about this a moment, shall we? It’s May, isn’t it? Everyone’s busy, and most of the rabbits are enjoying themselves. No elil [enemies] for miles, or so they tell me. No illness, good weather. And you want me to tell the warren that young–er–young–er brother here has got a hunch and we must all go traipsing across country to goodness knows where and risk the consequences, eh? What do you think they’ll say? All delighted, eh?”
Now, that’s some serious top bunny wisdom there. And as the old saying goes, “As the rabbits go, so should go humans.” Ok, that’s not an old saying, or a saying at all, but clearly, it should be! We should all, to mix our animal-based metaphors, stick our heads in the sand, keep supporting Trump, and munch on clovers while the U.S. of A. as we know it slowly dies in front of us. To leave this warren of ours would be to admit we were wrong about Trump, and that is an ego notch we can’t come down to.
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All’s Well, That Ends Horribly
As we were saying approximately 800 words ago, Adams Watership is a prescient, apt book to be reading these days. Of course Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and an admirable group of rabbits had the smarts to see the rabbit prints on the well and flee the warren. The U S. of A. is our warren, so we conservatives have no choice but to stay and fight for it. It remains to be seen, though, if our fellow Republicans can and will put their venality, mendacity, careerism aside long enough to get it together to kick Trump the curb. Then we can all go back to being the pre-Trump Republicans we were–a-holes, to be sure, but a-holes that were at least recognizable as thinking, rational, logical humans!
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© 2018 Akbar Khan
