The Scottish Play

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Macbeth. Act IV, Scene IV

That last part is often used to characterize a blowhard, an idiot. It describes, in modern parlance, one who is spouting off about something, full of vigor, with no apparent substance to back up the noise.

Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann come to mind when we hear these wonderful, ancient words.

But Shakespeare as no fool. He was a master of the use of language. He could really turn a phrase, that one.

And what is he describing. exactly? Read it again. He's not talking about any specific individual. He's talking about life itself!

Wow, what a thought. That life is vacuous and meaningless. We just amble through it, from beginning to end and "at the end of the day", it all amounts to nothing.

Hmmm...

I started this post with that phrase in mind as a way to describe the current crop of idiots running for the presidency.

I was thinking about how, in a few years, or maybe hundreds, the people we are forced to listen to, from Donald Trump to Barack Obama...all of them will be footnotes.

None of them are truly great statesmen. None are inventors of grand concept or original thought. There isn't a Shakespeare among 'em.

They are actors, playing parts that we expect them to play. White hat, black hat, left, right, good, bad. Dependent upon our point of view, they are either saints or the Devil reincarnate.

I take some comfort in knowing that the pain of having to endure the likes of Sarah Palin and even Barack Obama is offset by the fact that in some moment in history to come, no one will remember them, no one will know who they were or what they had to say.

Do you know who ran for president in 1842? I sure didn't. I had to look it up. It was John Tyler.

Who else ran? Who lost to him? What did those people have to say?

I have no clue. And furthermore I couldn't care less.

I'm too busy caring about my life, however futile it may be. I'm too busy worrying about the mortgage and my family. I'm just too damned busy.

So in some distant time no one will have ever heard of Sarah Palin. No one will ever know that she claimed that Paul Revere was riding to warn the British of impending troubles (what...did he shout, "You are coming! YOU ARE COMING!!?") No one will remember the fact that she could see Russia from her back porch or that she could field dress a moose.

No one will remember and no one will care.

They will all be caught up with their own idiots who will, like life itself, be full of sound and fury...once more, signifying nothing.