Shoots Brazil nuts, does he?
You stir me strangely.
Of all the moral disappointments,
possibly as many as three at last
count, which one must lay at the
door of the previous Presidency,
the blithe debasement he brought
upon the Drones by casual resort
to their employment in one char-
after of offense or another, will
surely be remembered as unworthy
of the well-read head of State.
In the hands of his successor,
so ostentatiously immune from
that characterization as to ap-
pease the idlest trifler in mor-
als, a temptation to over-exert
Drones may be accorded, rather,
to statistical accident of his
knowing about them at all. Yet
as we see, still the offense re-
mains, pleading for depiction,
hostile as it is, to etiquette.
Is it the drone's deprivation
of the human element, or its re-
lief of human culpability, which
more affronts the scruples of an
inhabitant of life? Half the fun
of being a Drone is to triumph
under risk, not over it; and the
other half is like unto it, a
serene nap in revealed triumph,
not compromised by deniability.
No sportsman can would content
himself with a secret bulls-eye.
Probably, therefore, it is the
suspense of the target which ap-
peals to our present President,
having much acquaintance with a
fly's protectiveness of its wings
under his omniscient espionage.
Regard the trembling infant, now
borrowed from a mother's arms
at that ballot-rich border of in-
terest; consider the bankrupting
farmer, deprived of markets by
his tariffs; the Masters Champion,
tarnished by the embrace of his
commercialization of the Medal of
Freedom. Who might not be next -
the unsuspecting balloteer in the
subverted sanctity of the polls?
It wasn't ever thus, of course,
at the Drones, and retired to the
Smoking Room for digestive coffee
amidst the merry trajectories of
cubes of sugar, hurled only occas-
ionally to effect, and never with
the sordidness of malice. A pity
our President cannot recall the
impetuous Earl, reveling in the
sport of his childhood, catapult-
ing a Brazil nut at the top hat
of a snobbish barrister in the
street below. With his genius for
losing legal representation, the
President might take heart from
a tidier style of their disposal.
But for the Drones, what relief?
What study of their humanity can
salvage it from the debasement of
ignorance, that wellspring of des-
peration so apotheosized in our
President's style of play? To've
heard of the Drones is one thing.
Not to know them in their world,
is to lack humane habitation,
and to careen into satiric range.
It was apparent to the Egg
that the old gentleman had
missed the gist.
He shoots with Brazil nuts.
Iasonas Lalos
Tom Hiddleston
P.G. Wodehouse
Cocktail Time
Simon & Schuster
1958
