Have we given enough credit to pathology of late?

A sympathetic reader, noting our distraction

this Spring by esoteric matters of policy, 

has sent us this reminder of pathology's as-

cendancy in these matters. Selecting an ava-

tar for this claustrophobic crisis, of being

sandwiched between two inadequately intimid-

ated states, with the insouciant hair of the

prime minister of the one, and the navigation-

al élan of the archetype of the other, he re-

minds us to investigate what is terrifying in

our entrapment in this vise of dreadfulness.

Is it the permeability of the fence, or the

specter of penetration that has captivated

The New Government and its flock: our 300

some odd million citizens are entitled to an

honest examination of their wretchedness, to

be exposed to this proximity of social risk.

In the annals of geopolitical conflagration,

it would be hard to identify two neighbors of

greater hostility to the manifest destiny of

our nation. Look, for example, at how equably

France and Germany have settled their Alsatian

tipping point, compared with Canada's tariff

on dairy production smaller than a sneeze in

Wisconsin, and Mexico's soothing trickle of

underpayable menial labor to, say, Pasadena.

If the European genius for border peace is

too easily explained by a long tradition of

gallant martial haberdashery, then look to

our herdings, hither and yon, of naked nat-

ive Americans, into suitably desolate en-

claves, as proof of what phobic reason can

accomplish. Are we worried that our alien

heathens will seize our condos on the East

Side? We need look no further than to their

protection by Russian oligarchs, to reflect

on resources which haven't failed us yet.

Possibly, then, if our digressions on policy

really can be dismissed as an unintended im-

pertinence to pathology, at least we have

taken care not to claim that higher cons-

ciousness as some congenital trait of our

heterogeneous lineage. That would take an

entire century or two of persistent myth-

making and denial, whilst anyone can see,

we have been busy, like Sterne's Uncle

Toby, reliving the Battle of Namur, rel-

ishing the glory of firing on Fort Sumter.

It is only too unimaginative, however, to

attribute our pathology to the chronically

ingrained and infallibly unanswerable tra-

dition of stark Confederate lying about

the motives for pummeling Fort Sumter, a

degeneracy which would have been swept a-

way by wise policy, barring internal fed-

eral borders, harboring it for endless rot.

But it's a snap to find our well of policy.

Laurence Sterne

The Life and Opinions of
  Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
1759-69
Everyman's Library
J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1912©