MARCH 28, 2025 – Actually, as is the case with so many things we take as gospel, the old curse attributed to the Chinese—“May you live in interesting times”—is not necessarily all that old or Chinese. Several accounts of provenance lead back to England—only one of which kinda, sorta suggests a Chinese affiliation. The most public version of the curse dates back to a 1898 speech by Prime Minister Joseph Chamberlain (father of the future Prime Minister and “Appeaser at Munich,” Neville Chamberlain) before Parliament.
Whatever. Chinese or Chamberlain, the curse, as it were, describes the continuous predicament of humanity. Tweaked by Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin,” May you live in interesting times is simply the way things are, always have been and always will be. So why is our hair on fire now? Or perhaps more to the point, Why isn’t our hair on fire all the time?
Not to beat a dead horse (another idiom traceable to England, first appearing in an 1859 newspaper article about a failed legislative reform effort), but as I have stated repeatedly on this blog, we shouldn’t be at all surprised by President Musk’s unimpeded terrorist attack against the government of the United States of America—fully encouraged by the MAGA movement and its primary jesters, Donald “Pyrite” Trump and his clown-faced cabinet.
Thank goodness for Andy Borowitz and Late Night show hosts—not to mention an additional host of social media memes—to humor us as we cry in our beer.
To a large extent—and this is the “beating a dead horse part”—we’ve been screwed up from the inception of our “great nation.” The right, of course, blames the left for why our wagon is axle-deep in wet manure-strewn over the muddy lane. Depending on the angle of analysis, however, it’s the corporatists, the timeless and omnipresent concentrations of wealth and power that led the cart down the road directly onto the dystopian way where we’re currently mired. “How in the world did we wind up here?” cry the people crowded on the wagon, their hair aflame. (Just to be clear, my own hair is very much on fire, though I don’t wonder, “How in the world . . .?”) Adding insult to injury for the liberal democrats (and Democrats) aboard the wagon is that while the wagon drivers (Democrat leadership) are snapping their impotent whips at the horses, the MAGA Marauders are swooping in from all sides to rob the unfortunate passengers of all their valuables.
After collecting their loot the hooligans will repair to their castle—an ancient redoubt, actually—to make merry deep into the night. King Midas will be fêted, while Donald “Pyrite” Trump and his band of drunken jesters feed at the trough, bust all the windows and furniture and swim in a pool of Chardonnay poured from the once grandly royal wine cave. They will party untouched, unfazed by the damage they have caused to the world beyond the moat of their narcissism. In their distorted minds, the “wagon people” aren’t people. They’re vermin, a scourge, an irrelevance, the scapegoated cause of their own dire straits.
In our indignation we are scandalized by the brigands that have seized our destiny. But what of the earlier generations of robber barons, corporate interests, and bought-and-paid-for politicians who built the castle, controlled the land, manipulated its inhabitants—allowing just enough subjects to join the palace guard so as to stave off a popular revolt? In our current strife have we forgotten about Watergate, Vietnam, McCarthyism, Father Coughlin, Jim Crow, Prohibition, Hooverville, the Palmer Raids, Woodrow Fiasco Wilson, the Homestead Strike, the Civil War, Slavery, the unjustified seizure of Mexican territory, the eradication of indigenous people, the relegation of women to non-voting status, the assassinations—to name a few of the deeper blemishes on our inglorious past? And we think we’re now in trouble?
A part of me—in my own version of indignation—wants to shout, “Same old; same old!” For a good many of us, life in these United States has been exceptionally good and gracious. Thanks to amnesia—the flip side of resilience—we’ve gone about our business as the rugged self-reliant individuals our culture says we are. We’ve bought and sold all the bright shiny objects that the market uses to inflate then satiate our appetites, except . . . being all too human, our thirst for more can never be slaked, especially when Big Credit, Big Tech, and Big Mac beat the drum of Big Buy.
But lest we despair over our own complicity, we should image ourselves as tourists of the future stopping at ruins of a storied castle . . . We alight from the luxury coach with its giant bug eyed side mirrors and company name and logo emblazoned on the luggage compartment panels above the levitrons and below our windows (Neverland Tours [with an image of Tinker Bell leading Peter Pan with Wendy, John, and Michael in aerial tow amidst a trail of stardust]). Our bright-eyed guide, raising a wand with a gold star and red, white and blue streamers tied to the end, leads us to the end of the drawbridge that crosses a broad ditch, which once upon a time was the castle moat.
“We’re about to enter the ruins of the Great Castle of AmPast,” she says into our audio transplants. “Before we tour this famous site, I’d like to give you a little background. The original foundations—still visible among the grasses—was financed by a bunch of early European capitalists. For labor they relied on various social rejects whose lives were so miserable that servitude, starvation, and savagery in this new land were viewed as the promise of paradise—except, mind you, in the case of Africans brought here against their will. Once the footings were established, ostracized religious zealots joined the fray.
“Over time the walls went up, the dungeons went down, and the size and power of the castle assumed full form. It separated from its European leash and asserted its own dominion over Indians, African slaves, and poor whites.
“More time passed. More ships filled with migrants arrived. They fought off the kicking immigrants one rung up, cut down more trees, spread their elbows, staked their claims, and pillaged the land westward. Infected with the notion that everyone could ‘make it,’ they also learned to ‘take it.’
“Over time, more castles were built, models of the first; more roads were cut; more trees were felled; more crops were sown, harvested and sold; more mines were dug, factories built. Eventually, much of the kingdom was unrecognizable from its primeval form. The main castle was made higher, thicker, and stronger.
“But like the tallest tree of the forest, ultimately the castle became the lightning rod of Zeus. A new breed of power aggrandizers swept over the land. People who had no need or time for roads with guardrails. Amassing huge fortunes, they leveraged common human traits into uncommon hubris. With egos as big as the sky, they deigned to take over the castle and deploy it to their own designs and precepts of how land and castle should be reordered. If the country had always been divided between the castle crowd and those who worked the land, the latter often ravaged by the former, in the last days, the castle was besieged from within by King Midas, Jester Pyrite, and their minions. In their pay and doing their bidding were the castle guards and protectors.
“But as occurs with all civilizations—both the civil and the uncivil—eventually ‘sh___ happens’ and the castle crumbled into the ruins that you see today.
“Before we enter . . . the restrooms, should you need them, are immediately on your right. The gift shop will be on our left, and at the conclusion of the tour, you’ll have ample time to load up on postcards, trinkets, and souvenirs. At noon we’ll be treated to a special lunch—old ale and ancient wines included—in the recently recreated Hall of Jesters, where the Castle Ruin Players will entertain us with a short play depicting life before the Great Destruction, which was just ahead of the Great Rise of the Seawaters. The name of play is, ‘May you live in interesting times.’
“Any questions? If none, then follow me, but please watch your step and stay on the walkways.”
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
