Horatius: a hero in Roman legend noted for his defense of a bridge over the Tiber against the Etruscans
This past week I saw a Facebook Video that showed a flock of baby lambs running out of a corral chute being confronted with an Australian Shepherd at the open gate. They all stopped and turned 180 degrees back into the corral. That scene for me serves as a metaphor of how we act as a society and mostly how our political process has become an exercise of “herd dynamics”. Everybody follows the herd. Very few people think and act for themselves. We need more people with the courage and instincts of an “Aussie”.
Think about how we reacted to Covid. Maybe we just need something to worry about. Think about the mass hysteria that proceeded Y-2K, Climate change—Global Cooling—Global Warming, ESG economic policy, Russia Collusion, and the Universal threat of White Conservative Christian men, and heaven forbid “toxic masculinity”.
We seem to be looking forward with hopeful anticipation to a “Black Swan” event that will let government take more control of our lives. Suspending habeas corpus seems to be looking for an action by conservatives as an excuse to change the cadence of election politics.
The Sky seems to be always falling. These are “the worst of times and the …worst of times” Really? For people that always follow the herd that may be true. If you follow the herd, you can always blame the herd for bad decisions or for bad outcomes. You don’t have to be accountable to yourself for the circumstances that you find yourself in.
Who leads us is very important. When we have leaders in industry, government, medicine and education who always follow the herd we end up looking like a bunch of sheep following whoever is in front of us. When we have politicians who only follow the herd instead of leading the herd we end up in bad places. When we have medical doctors who read the news or watch CNN to form opinions about issues like Covid mitigation and treatment strategies, or we have advisors in government agencies that can only follow each other and a projected chain of command—was there any body at NIH or the CDC that stood “at the gate” like an Australian Shepherd and said “NO” to the Wuhan narrative? How many in the media have been witnesses firsthand to the Joe Biden cognitive decline and said nothing?
We have smart people in our military who halfway through their careers decide that they want to be politicians thus making rank more important than expertise. Who was “standing at the gate” at the Pentagon the night before the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal and disordered retreat?
In many aspects of our lives today we have “experts” who have become “yes men” who make following and supporting a political narrative and getting an approving pat on the head from their boss, more important than the expert advice that they only are capable of giving.
In 1964 Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the media is the message” in his landmark book UNDERSTANDING MEDIA. THE EXTENSION OF MAN. Today I propose that the media is the “massage”. At all levels of society and especially in government the media is actually setting the political narrative and “massages” the truth to create its’ own version of the truth. Politicians and WE THE PEOPLE look like sheep charging out the gate following a media shepherd.
Looking at the Sheep Dog—an Aussie I believe, guarding the gate, I am reminded of several lines in Thomas Macaulay’s famous poem where three young soldiers guarded the gate of a bridge and saved Rome from thousands of Etruscan invaders—”Horatius at the Gate”. This is why we must never run with “the herd”. This is why we must never give in to a faction of “experts”.
To every man upon this earth, death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods,
“And for the tender mother who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses his baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus, that wrought the deed of shame?
This is why we must stand up to the “cheap fake” false political narratives—especially as they become more common as election day nears. We owe it to our families and those that will come after us. We owe it to ourselves.
My next “Aussie” will be named “HORATIUS”.
