And Other Senses

The Salts out on The Patio were taking a break from watching the Big Flatscreen in the Conference Room. We were busy, since we have work to do in attempting to decrypt the torrent of information aimed at our eyes and ears and other senses. But outside, it was drizzling with occasional insistence, and we were forced back inside to witness fragments of quite remarkable messaging.

The information conflict in progress is what we are attempting to monitor, and it is getting stranger by the day. We keep thinking we are seeing something extraordinary. Then it is abruptly surpassed in audacity, sometimes before the churning of a single news cycle.

That is why we were going to run the tale of Jenkins Ear, to provide a juxtaposition to a recent interview with Dr. Tony Fauci, the renowned physician who apparently never actually practiced medicine on humans before becoming the highest paid bureaucrat in the sprawling Federal Establishment,

He might still be, though that would take more research than we have time available. His remote diagnosis, conducted digitally, on recent events is useful for context on the subject of ears:

“I don’t think there is much more to it I mean, from what we’ve seen and what we’ve heard, it was a bullet shot that grazed his ear and injured his ear, according to the physicians who examined him. There was no other further damage.”

We marveled at that assessment. Then, preparing for an early pick-up for the short yellow medical bus there were the morning headlines. They blared, to eyes and ears, things like: “Cell Phone Data Reveals Crooks May Have Had a ‘Special’ Visitor, Secret Service Director Testifies on Capitol Hill, Told She is Full of **It, Where is Joe Biden?”

So, a short chat about another ear of historic note would be in order to provide perspective on changing times. Robert Jenkins was the owner of one of the more famous cranial appendages. He was a Welch Master Mariner who appeals to the Salts by a distant shared experience. Or some of it, anyway.

Jenkins was master of a British ship loosely chartered by the government but also a private armed operator of a proud ship named the Rebecca on the high seas. His ear became a contributory cause in a conflict between the Monarchs of Britain and Spain waged with cannons and fire that drifted above the waves for nine years.

It is now known as “The War of Jenkins Ear,” since a bold Spaniard named Juan de León Fandiño captured Jenkin’s ship. He had Jenkins bound to a mast and then sliced off his right ear with a cutlass, missing his skull by millimeters.

Those units of measurement would not be invented for another hundred years, but no matter. Fandiño boldly handed the severed flesh back to Jenkins, awarded him his life, and told him to take the ear back to King George to demonstrate the importance of listening to opposing views.

That is worth a longer discussion, since one of the subjects under discussion was the involuntary servitude of other humans, a topic which has caused major conflicts elsewhere in the years between those times and ours. It is apparently once again a matter of some debate.

We saw that in the following stories, synthesized in the images below that have rapidly been crafted to accompany a dramatic change in our political landscape. Or at least it looks rapid, though obviously it has been in progress since well before the early debate schedule was announced last May.

And possibly a long time before that. Like in 2016.

A discussion of that matter followed, accompanied by a tablet that was passed around the picnic table with some new campaign material supporting a campaign that apparently has been under development since the conclusion of World War Two. It features all sorts of new facts and invented truths based on formerly shared values:

We had thought this was going to be entertaining as it unfolds over the next three months- a struggle for control of the town on the other bank of the big River. It could be fun.

It certainly will be something, you hear?

Hey, Put down that digital cutlass and let’s talk, shall we?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com