When Bubbles Burst

November 8, 2016

November 9, 2016

Nowadays it's easy to live in a bubble. Today if a man has a computer and internet access he can build an imaginary world of his choosing and live in it seemingly unscathed by reality. Examples are everywhere and infamous. Anthony Weiner is only the latest specimen.

Yesterday one had to be filthy rich -- or regal -- to live insulated from life's slings and arrows. Kings and Queens lived in bubbles of opulence exacted from their subjects and bubbles of turbulence created by their own imaginary demons. If reality drew too close, it could be commanded away by the wagging of a pinky finger adorned by a ruthless and powerful ring.

Political sycophants and their adoring press are today's version of royalty. They live in Washington, D.C. in tax-built palaces surrounded by ideological moats and fanatical armies of partisans that scour the hinterlands for unguarded loot that they can shower upon their benefactors in exchange for favors and a fair share of the good life.

And then there are our coddled youngsters who ensconce themselves in a dorm room in the belly of an ivy-covered bunker and dream up ideal rules for the rest of us to live by, rules guaranteeing perfect justice, rules which only they are wise enough to enforce, justice which only they are educated enough to distribute in appropriate and equal measure, as we the peons toil on the hardscrabble earth producing what life, reality and our betters demand from us.

But every once in a long while the stars align, the heavens smile and the bubbles burst. The Kings lose their heads, the politicians lose their positions and the youngsters lose their pacifiers.

And Anthony Weiner? He loses his computer.

However, Weiner will quickly recover. He's already diligently fashioning himself another fantastical life in a new bubble prescribed for him by a compassionate culture. He's exorcising his demons in a clinic for those afflicted with the disease of sexual deviancy.

How long will it be, I wonder, before all the bubbles are repaired and all our lives return to normal?