Alexander Pope and the Governor
“Reebok Socks and Rigamarole!” wrote Alexander Pope in defiant protest to the currents of his day. “I have never met anyone so under qualified for the position of Governor,” he continued, “as the lunatic preacher who now holds that office.” Setting down his olden-times sharpee, Pope decided to take a bath.
Splashing the water always made him feel a little better. It was perhaps the one thing (other than women) that could take his mind away from politics long enough for him to smile. Alcohol, of course, only intensified his discord, and worse made him seek unfortunate and largely random subjects to be the targets of his monologues.
But today even splashing seemed insufficient to lift his mood. Masturbating in the tub offered a few minutes respite, but as soon as he was finished the anger at his present political leader quickly returned twofold, along with a vague sense of loneliness.
It wasn’t so much that the governor was unintelligent, though for a man of such important office he surely was. It wasn’t even that the governor placed more import on shmoozing with aristocrats than on resolving the major fiscal and legal issues of his day. It was simply that the governor had never questioned, to any serious degree, anything that anyone had ever told him. As a result, he was a man fully captivated by the status quo, and blind to the possibility of man’s errors.
It always amazed Pope how anyone who studied history could come away from their education still believing that empires were permanent, politicians were never corrupt, and governments knew what they were doing, Surely anyone with half a wit, upon surveying the field of 5000 years of history, could see that power and structure both rose and fell with the frequency and stability of water on a windy bay. Furthermore, while one wave was being pushed up toward the sky, it was always the case that the water around it would drop down. “The water has to come from somewhere!” Pope screamed, still naked in the tub. But the idea of this connectedness, this failure to understand that balance was not only an ideal but a strictly enforced principal of the universe, had never occurred to the governor. Nor, he supposed, had the thought that men caught up in their own petty pursuits often miss the most important works of their office, in this case the protection of the people from themselves.
Splashing the water always made him feel a little better. It was perhaps the one thing (other than women) that could take his mind away from politics long enough for him to smile. Alcohol, of course, only intensified his discord, and worse made him seek unfortunate and largely random subjects to be the targets of his monologues.
But today even splashing seemed insufficient to lift his mood. Masturbating in the tub offered a few minutes respite, but as soon as he was finished the anger at his present political leader quickly returned twofold, along with a vague sense of loneliness.
It wasn’t so much that the governor was unintelligent, though for a man of such important office he surely was. It wasn’t even that the governor placed more import on shmoozing with aristocrats than on resolving the major fiscal and legal issues of his day. It was simply that the governor had never questioned, to any serious degree, anything that anyone had ever told him. As a result, he was a man fully captivated by the status quo, and blind to the possibility of man’s errors.
It always amazed Pope how anyone who studied history could come away from their education still believing that empires were permanent, politicians were never corrupt, and governments knew what they were doing, Surely anyone with half a wit, upon surveying the field of 5000 years of history, could see that power and structure both rose and fell with the frequency and stability of water on a windy bay. Furthermore, while one wave was being pushed up toward the sky, it was always the case that the water around it would drop down. “The water has to come from somewhere!” Pope screamed, still naked in the tub. But the idea of this connectedness, this failure to understand that balance was not only an ideal but a strictly enforced principal of the universe, had never occurred to the governor. Nor, he supposed, had the thought that men caught up in their own petty pursuits often miss the most important works of their office, in this case the protection of the people from themselves.
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