Bernini’s early 17th sculpture of Apollo and Daphne, which you can see in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, is perhaps the most beautiful sculpture ever created. It’s also a useful metaphor for the sordid times in which we live.
Apollo is chasing Daphne at full speed. His cloak is spread out to reflect the action. As he almost catches her, he places his hand where her waist should be, but his hand only touches the bark of the laurel tree she is turning into.
Bernini’s skill is so great that you can see the bark climbing her legs and the leaves sprouting from her hands. Pictures don’t do it justice. You need to be standing by the sculpture and walking around it to get the full, overwhelming effect. At any rate, it represents the most emphatic “no” spoken over the ages.
Image of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne by Alvesgaspar. CC BY-SA 4.0.
This is probably a lost lesson for present-day progressives who think that anything goes and that Western Civilization has nothing to offer today’s vulgar culture. Not only is Daphne saying no to being Apollo’s lover and captive (notwithstanding his beauty or literal status as a god), but also, by turning into a tree, she puts an abrupt stop to Apollo’s advance. Moving at full speed, he is about to plow into her stationary tree.
Think of P Diddy “parties” and Epstein’s Island and the “alleged” prominent unrevealed guest lists not only from those places but from venues all over DC and beyond. Publish the lists and purge these terrible people. It isn’t just those types of alleged sexual orgies but a general orgy culture at the highest levels of government and quasi-government activities, all involving large numbers of our “elite” leaders, public “servants,” and civilian collaborators.
Rotted-out cultures do rotten things. When De Gaulle returned to France after WWII, he congratulated the French people for resisting the Nazis. Unfortunately, few resisted the Nazis—maybe 200,000 in a nation of 41 million, with some estimates as low as only 70,000 actively resisting. France was a nation of Nazi collaborators. (For a great novelist’s-eye-view of this era, see Alan Furst’s A Hero of France, as well as his other books.)
The recent history of resistance to the “pandemic” excesses in the US mirrors the French resistance. Few were willing to risk their jobs to support the Constitution. Petty totalitarians bloomed at every level in both the government and the private sector, ready to enforce rules that were useless and illegal.
Orgies have gone on throughout history, but it seems that they have become more common and accepted as religion fades out. It’s not just sexual orgies. We have had four years of Obama/Biden orgies of progressiveness: Wild Executive Orders, crazy legislation, and unconstitutional activities. To make things worse, those were layered onto eight years of Obama’s efforts to undermine America.
Both men attempted to divide the country along racial lines and identity politics. Maybe that is about to be pushed back, but the fight over Trump’s cabinet members and high-level political appointees shows that the Biden/Obama cohort still seeks to undermine the Trump mandate.
The “Russia, Russia, Russia” shrieks from Trump’s first term have given way to “democracy threat, democracy threat, democracy threat” in the second coming of Trump. Pelosi carries this forward with the trope that the House is “The People’s House.” The only reason suddenly to claim that is that she is promoting so-called American “democracy.”
However, America has never been a small “d” democracy, which the Founders abhorred. Instead, we have always been a constitutional Republic. For one hundred years, beginning with the 17th Amendment’s making the Senate—meant to be a bulwark—into just a smaller House, Congress is designed in its present mode to represent DC progressivism, not the “people.” This is true not just for the Democrats but also for the many Republicans who meekly yield to every Democrat initiative, even while whining gently about the cost.
With Trump’s election, though, progressives and their Republican allies (“Vichy Republicans” if you want to think in terms of WWII France) may be about to plow into something similar to Daphne’s tree...or perhaps a Trump Sequoia Forest.