Honest in their folly

It is truly amazing how the deluge of so-called nuisance candidates is being taken seriously by an inordinate number of people who are supposed to know better. These nuisance candidates bother nobody. They have not asked anyone for a bowl of rice. They have not pestered anyone with a trinket to sell. At worst, they may test the limits of your credulity, but only if you allow them. And yet they are, to a man -- or woman -- being treated with contempt and scorn.

Far worse others treat their fellows more contemptuously and scornfully than these nuisance candidates and yet are treated with greater deference, if not more respect. These nuisance candidates are more honest in their folly than many so-called honorables for whom we reserve leadership positions in the land. A man who wants to make legal the four seasons may be a fool, but the learned and honorable man who fools everyone by promising the world but fails to deliver a tack is worse.

Let the nuisance candidates be. Their act of filing certificates does not automatically make them presidents.

All it does is give them an experience they can tell anyone willing to listen, and a piece of paper they can frame and hang on a wall barren of any testament signifying some achievement they may have done in the course of their lonely battle for sanity.

These people do not vie for honors. They do not cry for recognition. They only want their own minute in the rarefied air of self-importance that costs not a cent to anyone. After filing their certificates of candidacy, they will vanish as quickly as they came, a passing that will leave no real difference between those we carelessly dismiss and those we chose to keep.

In our own time, we will have our own stories to tell, to whoever also cares to listen. And I just wonder if our stories will be more honest and as exciting as the tales of great wonder that the nuisance candidates weave with the unassailable conviction of fools. I wonder too if the tall tales we have constantly been fed by our leaders will even outlive the life stories of those who, in one brief moment of disoriented inspiration, truly thought themselves presidentiables.

But remember this always -- there but for the grace of God go you or I. But for divine providence it could have been any of us, with flowers in our hair, promising to legislate the forgiveness of sins, and whatever creepy idea there is worth a momentary ha ha. You see, circumstances favor no one. Nothing is more random than the distribution of wisdom. And nothing is more blessed than using wisdom to refrain from passing judgment on those who God has favored with innocence.

Let us not be too hard, therefore, on the nuisance candidates. Let us not stress ourselves over nothing. Besides, they are not really nuisance candidates as in fact they are not yet candidates. They have, for all intents and purposes, merely filed their certificates of candidacy. Most, if not all, will probably end up in the abysmal anonymity from whence they originally came.

What bothers me is not the emergence of these nuisance candidates, as I can live with a thousand of them. Rather, I am bothered by the inordinate attention given them by supposedly learned people who ought to devote their energies and focus on the real people that matter to us, the people who we have entrusted with lofty leadership positions but who have done almost nothing to satisfy our expectations.

Why have these supposedly learned people not demanded an honest accounting of their trust in those who claim to go by the straight path but who are truly only after their own interests, who pursue their corrupt enemies but protect their own corrupt friends and relatives?

Why are the supposedly learned and wise easily upset by those who do not hide their folly, and not by those who feign honesty and wisdom but are really wolves in sheep's clothing or devils in disguise?