To A Mouse

In 1786, Robert Burns penned a simple poem, “To a Mouse”.  It is an apology written to an anonymous rodent for upturning his nest while Burns ploughed his field.  “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/ Gang aft a-gley (often go awry).”  Elegant, and often misquoted, those two lines of prose capture perfectly the human struggle and our seeming inability to find within each other that which would peacefully bind us together.  Where one man wishes to have peace, another engages in hostility for no other reasons than to prove his enemy wrong or to take from him what he wants.  War, we have found, is not always the best answer.  Politics – and politicians – are not always the best voice. 

It is ironic then how similar war and nation-building are to running for president of the United States in the modern era, don’t you think?  In war, your objective is (or, at the very least, should be) the complete and utter, yet not quite inhumane destruction and intimidation of your opponent.  In the race to become the next leader of the free world, your focus is the same, albeit with fewer casualties.  Typically described as ‘campaigns’, both are gross misappropriations of confidence, one side firmly believing their strength and cunning are enough to disengage their enemy (and assorted supporters).  The hoped for outcome of each is the toppling of insurgency, the dismantling of that which propaganda tells us is evil, and the introduction of one’s superior beliefs into an otherwise uncivilized and unsophisticated culture. 

The planet is dotted with red states and blue states, no matter the country.  Confined within every border and woven internationally, as well, there has existed in man for millennia the desire to best his enemy.  War and politics drive the building of nations, yes.  They are the visible spectrum of light used to illuminate both progress and oppression; their voices shouting mightily through the loudspeaker touting their triumph or loss in an effort to win sympathetic allies.  But it is their beastly undercarriage which scratches indiscriminately below the surface being ploughed, an undignified chumming of the waters, which polarizes and turns those who would be friends into enemies.  An apology for that on any level is rare.

“Man is the only animal that deals in the atrocity of atrocities, war.  He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind.  He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out….and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.  And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for ‘the universal brotherhood of man’ – with his mouth.”  Mark Twain wrote that, and it can be appropriately applied to both war, as well as the business of politics in this country and abroad. 

Shouldn’t we applaud the building of nations and the uplifting of the citizenry which may have once been oppressed?  Shouldn’t we support the desire for change promulgated by the disenfranchised and underrepresented?  And shouldn’t we encourage the dissenting opinions of those who simply want to be heard?  I think so.  Whether by ballot or bullet, change is the only certainty the world can count on.  Men will war in search of peace until the end of civilization as we know it; democrats and republicans will do the same for the next eight months.  Someone once emphatically shouted, ‘Yes We Can!’

That’s all well and good if you’re the farmer.  But what if you’re the mouse?