This morning I was talking on the phone to my good friend from back east where I used to live. We were discussing politics as we often do. She got into talking about how she finds it so puzzling and upsetting how people can worship Trump the way they do. Her own sister is one of these people. To say she’s smitten by Trump is an understatement. Then she used a term I’d never heard before.
If you are a regular reader of my Substacks you know how I like descriptive alliterations, my own and when they are used on the main page of websites like HUFFPOST.
She said that these MAGA’s have minds as soft as shit in a sneaker.
Twice a week my partner, Ann, and I go over to her kid’s house and walk their little dog. Of course we always pick up her poop but the last time we walked her she went into some high grass and pooped there. Ann couldn’t find her deposit and pick it up with the poop bag. I told her to give up because nobody walked there. Then I recalled when there were no such things as doggie poop bags and people just let their dogs do their doody anywhere. I recalled the number of times I had the decidely unpleasant experience of stepping in dog doo.
Don’t say I don’t provide references in my Substack for your enlightenment:
Dog poop bags were invented in the mid-1980s as a way to clean up after dogs. They quickly became popular and are now a common sight in parks, on sidewalks, and in other public areas. While some people still prefer to use plastic grocery bags, most dog owners now use specialized poop bags that are made from biodegradable materials. (Reference)
MAGA minds can be described as soft meaning these people are gullible, get their news from far right media, lack the ability or inclination to engage in critical thinking, and when a few do try to get more information they succumb to confirmation bias.
In another way, their thinking isn’t soft, it is hard and rigid. Once they have an established constellation of beliefs which in sum confirm that Trump is a god and his actions are the best thing for themselves and the country they are not subject to change their minds.
Only drastic actions that they can attribute to Trump which hurt them personally may put a hole in the dike that holds back the flood of the destruction of the democracy they enjoy for themselves.
The story of the Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates, which includes the hole in the dike story (but only in some versions), isn’t where this tale originated. It is from from “Dr. Boli’s Fables for Children Who Are Too Old to Believe in Fables “where it was titled .“The Little Dutch Boy Who Saved Holland” (here).
Here’s how that fable begins:
ONCE THERE WAS a little Dutch boy who discovered a leak in the dike.
What should he do? From a single leak, a terrible breach might grow. The whole country could be flooded, and everyone he knew would drown.
So he did the only thing he could think of. He stuck his finger in the dike, and the leak stopped.
Of course, now he was stuck. He couldn’t move, because as soon as he did, the leak would start again.
So he stood there for quite some time. He was rather tired, and his finger felt a bit numb from the effort of holding back the North Sea, but he knew he was doing his duty.
Obviously I mean this to be a metaphor as, perhaps, the author of this did. Consider that as the story goes on the Burgomaster passes by, sees the boy and realizes he is stopping a catastrophe and tells him he will be rewarded but to stay there.
The story continues:
So the boy stood there with his finger in the dike for a few more days.
It was not long, however, before another leak sprang in the dike, a little bit farther down the way.
“What shall we do?” the Burgomaster asked the Burghers. “There is another leak.”
“As private enterprise has so admirably solved the previous problem,” one of the Burghers responded, “the solution to this new leak is obvious. We need only persuade another heroic boy to stick his finger in it.”
So they went into the local school and found another boy who, after much persuasion, was willing to stick his finger in the dike.
It was, however, only a few days later that two more leaks appeared. This time it was much harder to persuade boys to stick their fingers in the holes; and when, a week later, half a dozen more leaks appeared, no volunteers were to be found.
When no boys would volunteer to plug the new holes more were forced to do this lest the dike collapse.
The story concludes:
“What shall we do?” the Burgomaster asked the Council. “We have run out of heroic little boys. At this rate, we may have to plug the leaks with our own fingers.”
“That would be moderately inconvenient,” one of the Burghers remarked.
So the Council voted to remove the North Sea by digging a new seabed somewhere in Germany; and they voted themselves a number of solid gold spades, befitting their dignity, for the purpose. And if you go to suburban Wilhelmshaven right now, and look into the field to your right as you drive westward on the Friedenstrasse, you will see a number of Dutch burghers very busy with their spades, trying to dig a new bed for the North Sea. It is lucky for them that the people of Wilhelmshaven have mistaken the burghers for a party of archaeologists looking for ancient Saxon remains, which has allowed them to continue the work uninterrupted.
I see this as a metaphor for what we face today. There’s no one hero trying to save democracy. There are lots of us. But it remains to be seen whether there are enough.
Addendum:
The following is from this article about The Silver Skates:
The most famous part of Hans Brinker is actually far removed from both the A and B plots (or even the C plot surrounding the race). It is the famous story of the Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the hole in the dike and saved his town. This incident is a folktale facsimile which is apparently based on nothing, but Dodge makes it feel so credible that she convinced whole generations this was an old story – despite appearing in the text only as an English school lesson. It took on a life of its own, and Dutch Genealogy did an interesting article on the topic.
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