A Study in Pink

Caught the new Sherlock Holmes on PBS yester. Very good. The new Dr. Watson says, "People don't have arch-enemies in real life." , trying to get some detail from the enigmatic Holmes about his life.

Of course. Of course arch-enemies and nemeses exist mainly in fiction. That is why our political discourse is in so wretched a state: we are living in a fiction. It is of our own making, but a myth and story it is.

Hatred and discord are passions of the great moment; they are a rush of blood chemistry and they overtop the dam of good sense... then they are gone. Enduring bitterness and vendettas, however, are the stuff of tales and drama that engage the attention of all for miles around and mesmerize our understanding for years.

I wonder what the "real" reality is like. I have never lived it. I was born into the miasma of the end of the Great Fatherland War, the Second World War which was the glory of the victorious and their subsequent demonization of each other.
We believed myths about each other. We struggled to keep our heads above water long enough to ensure we would not destroy the earth with our missiles.
Then I lived in the divide between white and black, between left and right, between education and why johnny cannot read... I have lived the myths told by incompetent bards who start the tale, stutter and forget, like the story of the Chesapeake Bay: constantly being saved from our dirt and poison, never going ten years in a row without us falling asleep and forgetting what proper husbandry is.

Tales told by fools, full of sound and fury...