On Coelacanths and Tree Snakes
In 1938, a South African fishing boat Captain, Hendrick
Goosen, brought in a catch that included a five foot long specimen with a
distinct azure-blue coloring, a tri-lobed tail, and paired lobe fins which
looked like four small legs. The Captain
gave it to Majorie Latimer, who ran a small local fish and reptile museum. She, in turn, sent a drawing, along with a
description, to Professor J.L.B. Smith, a local fish fanatic, who identified it
as a Coelacanth.
This find was called the “Discovery of the Century” since
Coelacanths were supposed to be extinct for 65 Million years. Remarkably, these living dinosaurs had survived,
almost completely unchanged from the Devonian Era.
Of course, that was the 20th Century, but there
are more living dinosaurs than just the Coelacanths. We can find them today
embodied in the platforms, and the standard-bearers, of the two major
parties. There’s not a single idea that
hasn’t tried over and over again, not a hint of oxygen in the stale sourness
that emanates from the campaigns.
Too harsh? Not
really. As David Brooks (who, despite many public displays of angst, is supporting Romney) wrote last week, “For a certain sort of
conservative, tax cuts and smaller government are always the answer, no matter
what the situation. For a certain sort of liberal, tax increases for the rich
and more government programs are always the answer.”
Brooks
is inadvertently putting his finger on something that is something unusual in
our history. We have always been a
dynamic political ecosystem, creating
new movements, and even new parties. But ever since Nixon capitalized on the
powerful race and class resentment caused by LBJ’s policies on Civil Rights and
the Viet Nam war, the two parties have settled down to a trench warfare, not
unlike the India/Pakistan partition in 1947, where millions physically moved to safer ground, but ideology and anger stayed undiluted and tribal.
The
problem with that type of an isolated and enclosed ecosystem is that it loses
its ability to adapt to new circumstances. That
leaves it vulnerable to invasive predatory species. There is a fascinating story in Oliver Sacks’
“Island of The Color Blind” about his visit to Guam. Sacks is amazed to hear the pervasive natural
silence in the forest. There’s no
birdsong on Guam, a former tropical paradise.
That’s because there are no birds.
They have all been eaten after an prolonged invasion of brown tree
snakes, who apparently stowed away on ships from the Solomon Islands, and with
no natural predators, have decimated native populations.
The
GOP has become fertile ground for voracious interest groups; the Norquists, the
Scolds, and the Tea Party types. These
folk combine an intense drive for power with a nihilistic contempt for
government in general, except when they use it to impose their beliefs on
others. They have entered the ecosystem
and are devouring everything in sight, including sometimes their own.
Democrats,
however, are still working with last century’s DNA. While they aren’t quite the tax-loving
liberals described in Brooks’ hyperbolic statement, they still can’t break out
of the Great Society shackles. If some
in the GOP simply want to eat everything is sight, the Democrats haven’t
grasped the most obvious fact, which is unless you have a global reform of
taxes and entitlements, and unless you embrace growth, sooner or later, there won’t
be enough of anything for anyone to eat.
That
ravaged political Earth has no room for big ideas.
Instead we are left with a tactical conflict where “ground game” and
voter suppression substitutes for a compelling narrative. Mr. Obama’s campaign
methodically makes the calls and gets out the vote. The
Republicans spin angry little fantasies and try to suppress turnout. In Indiana’s LaPorte County, the GOP
Co-Director of Voter Registration, Donna Harris, waited until her Democratic
counterpart went on medical leave and then supervised a purge of 16% of the
entire district’s voters, about 13,000 votes.
That she was married to the County’s GOP leader, who was also on the
ballot, and that the district was in the heart of Democratic Congressman Joe
Donnelly’s district, who just happens to be running for Senate in a close race,
I’m sure was just a coincidence. After painstaking effort, 11,000 voters have been restored, many after being
turned away to vote the first time they appeared at the polls.
Non-adaptive, heavily armored creatures and predators who eat everything in sight. Not much to get optimistic about when we need creativity and courage.
Perhaps
nature can show us the way?
In
Guam, they have tried dropping dead mice
packed with Tylenol into the forest cover.
The omnivorous brown tree snake is one of the few snakes that will also
eat something they don’t kill. It’s not yet
clear how effective this is, but the practice is considered comparatively safe,
since are few other species on Guam that could be tempted by the mouse bait, as
the brown tree snakes have already decimated them.
And,
in an exquisite bit of irony, creationists have taken to claiming that the
prehistoric nature of Coelacanths is proof that evolution is a fraud.
More
credible is the interesting fact that the huge fish, who can grow to six feet
and a half feet and nearly 200 pounds,
has only a miniscule brain that occupies only 1.5 percent of its cranial
cavity; the rest is filled with fat.
Life
imitating art?
MM
