Whale Ho: In Which Walter Russell Mead Seems to Be Reading from the Same Text I Am

Walter Russell Mead is a distinguished historian and that rarest of all American academics, a genuine intellectual. I've been reading his books and columns for well over ten years and find him to be always insightful, informative, or inspiring. Often all three.

In today's new essay at Via Media, When Government Jumps the Shark , Mead takes us on a metaphoric ride through the blasted landscape of contemporary America and how we have arrived at this point. Towards the end he goes beyond "The Shark" and to the very Whiteness of the Whale:

That fifth and final stage — which one hopes we will never see — takes the transformation one fateful step farther. No longer just a great white shark, the progressive ideal would become a great destroyer, a mythical figure like the Great White Whale in Moby Dick. To pursue the whale is madness; Captain Ahab, despite warnings and omens, persists on his insane pursuit of the uncatchable ideal, the untameable beast. Disaster and bankruptcy loom on every side; still the captain continues inexorably on his course. In the end, when something cannot go on for ever, it comes to a stop. The whale turns on the ship and smashes it to pieces in the sea.

The French have a very French saying that translates to "An agreeable person is a person who agrees with me." Now even though I have no pretensions of even approaching Mead's erudition, I was pleased to see his sighting of the White Whale looming over the American political landscape. It put me in mind of my own far less learned effort two days ago in "The Ship of State:"

The thing is under the boat. The crew suspects as much but can't know for sure exactly where it is. They won't know where Leviathan is until it rises, inevitable and unstoppable, from the deep directly beneath them.

Can you feel it lurking just under the surface? I can and I think you can as well. The Greeks knew it as "Nemesis." Melville's Ahab knew it as "thou damned whale" and he struck at it from Hell's heart. Unperturbed it gathered him up and took him down. Then it took the boat and after that the ship. All save one followed. The whale beneath the surface of America's life is still there and all signs point to its breaching soon. Exactly where and exactly how are still unknown, but soon.

I was even more pleased to see that we are in agreement that the whale must not be allowed to smash the boat.

Posted by Vanderleun at June 10, 2011 8:56 PM