Naphta

Davos

Democracy is, when you think about it, a rather esoteric concept. Majority rules and every vote counts are easy enough ideas to swallow—unless of course you are a believer in the divine right of kings or dictatorship of the proletariat. The American system of government emanates from Roman law. But "checks and balances," for instance, are plainly not working. Jurisprudence can defy the will of populace. But what will the future hold? The Catholic Church and the Communist party have something in common according Naphta, one of Thomas Mann’s characters in The Magic Mountain. The enlightenment view of it individual freedom leads to greed and chaos. But what happens when a religious or even secular state establishes a set of dictums. Plato’s Republic is probably the earliest example of this. Then there is Samuel Butler's Erewhon, an emordnilap which almost reads “nowhere.” In the absence of a Second Coming or Hegelian dialectic, one is left with a recipe created by Locke, Hume and Hobbes, an alternating toxic and intoxicating cocktail.

read "Rhododendron" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star