(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Maggots, MAGA types, Metaphors, and 'Murica [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-12 I’m gonna try to write this in a way that will not get me kicked offa Kos, because, you know, I kinda like Kos; I like to hear reasonably intelligent people (although too many of them seem to be completely innocent of grammar) argue about real things; I like it because it is, in general, a pretty damn good site, and one of the few places where you can go to find the opinions of other liberals. Not long ago, speaking of the MAGA movement (in a reply to a diary), I referred to its followers by using the MAGA tag plus the “t” that we sometimes add to indicate somebody comes from such and such a place. I received a sternly-worded notice to the effect that such verbal contumely was no longer considered appropriate on Kos, lest we hurt the fee-fees of Nazis. No, really, it was a matter of courtesy, and we should all behave like good atheist Christians. NO, really, they were kinda right, if irritating, and I felt bad. I was using the term to vent my anger at those presumptuous, lying, ignorant—well, no, there I go again. Anyway, I was using the term derisively. Why should I pretend to be a better person than I am? Who could I fool, anyway? Besides, I’m sure I’m not the only one who got that notice. The derisive term had been used frequently on Kos by other people, I’d noticed. Besides, they were right, if, to my taste, a bit chinchy and PC. Now, however, I want to argue for the term (I am NOT using it, guys) from another basis. I want to argue that although it has primarily been used for scorn and bitter invective (including, as I say, my own—I despise racists and nazis), it is actually a stunningly accurate metaphor. The MAGA people are very much like white grubs wriggling in and consuming the corruption of the republic. They are precisely like that. Notice that I am not arguing as so many do (and as I would like to) that they are “evil.” No. It isn’t fair to use that religiously loaded and undefined word on them. They aren’t “evil.” They arise naturally, and they fill a perfectly natural, even a valuable, function. There’s a Travis McGee novel in which the villain survives a copter crash in Nam but with horrible burns, and thereafter, to escape punishment for his previous crimes, pretends to be one of the people who died in the crash. He’s so disfigured that he gets away with it for a while. Nobody can tell he’s not the guy. In his agonized struggle for survival in that jungle, he allows the maggots to consume the dead flesh of his ruined arm. It keeps him from dying of gangrene. That description, in all its revolting and ugly detail, has stayed with me, haunted me, these many years. I remember vividly the moment, when as a little white boy in Mississippi, a silent black child tugged my hand and pulled me to come see the maggots writhing in the suppurating corpse of an incredibly foul-smelling dead rabbit in the dust of the road. But those grubs aren’t evil. They’re just doing what they do, following the life-cycle they were born into. And in their own way, without intending to, simply by following their own instincts, they contribute to the universe. Getting rid of the dead meat. Getting rid of it by turning it into flies, yeah, but still. So what I’m saying, the metaphor invoked by the addition of that small “t” is actually pretty damn accurate, and if anything, is more charitable than many of us would otherwise be. The MAGA people aren’t the problem. The problem is what’s wrong with the United States. If our system wasn’t rotten, they would not be there. They feed on the moral and legal rot. And here’s where I want to talk about metaphors for a minute. I want to talk about metaphors because I love my country. I love it the way I loved Mississippi as a child. Still love it, if you define it as a place, not as the cozy nest of racists, lynch-pinheads, hypocrite-lecteurs, and the southern bastard convention. Because metaphors have limits. Robert Frost knew that, and warned us. Metaphors are useful tools of thought, highly suggestive observations of remarkable resemblances. But resemblances, okay—NOT identities. If you say your love is like a red red rose (and yeah, I know that’s technically a simile and not a metaphor, but come on, aside from the word “like,” what’s the big difference?), you do not mean that your love has red petals and green leaves and blossoms on a thorn-bush. You mean your love is beautiful--and maybe, if you’re smart enough, that she or he smells as good to you as a rose would smell, no matter what its name was. Metaphors have limits. Which is, in this case, a good thing. Because maybe this is where the metaphor no longer works. Maybe we can hope that the republic is not like an animal’s body, but more like a tree’s. Maybe it can be wounded, but can grow around the wound, can heal and accept the damage and go on and grow up to be a fine big upstanding oak tree all in its own annals. That’s what I hope. And even though I think the metaphor is accurate, and that we’d better start doing something about the rot instead of wasting our angry energies on the MAGA people, and though on the whole I don’t think much of the whole PC thing, I haven’t used the MAGA-word in this essay, okay? And accurate as I think it is, I’m gonna keep my mind on the limits of metaphor, and try not to use any more anywhere. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/12/2198944/-Maggots-MAGA-types-Metaphors-and-Murica?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/