Anonymous Germany, Anonymous Italy:
Book XXXIII.10 Macedonians pretend to surrender
{Quarte Decadis Liber Quartus p. CXCVIII verso}
Series/Book Title: Illustrations from Livy, Decades.
Venice, Philipp Pincio, September 27, 1511 (1493)

" … to continue contemplating a Surrendering I'll never accomplish."

The seemingly endless inanity eventually wears anyone down. Surrounded by monstrous stupidity, the least of us start feeling defeated. Logic won't work. Reason fails us again and again. There's no reasonable explanation. We eventually say, to ourselves if to nobody else, "Maybe I'm the crazy one." We're exhausted trying to maintain what we previously never even needed to consider. I stopped eating eggs rather than continue fretting over their ridiculous price. I sense my world contracting. I was raised with the explicit expectation that our universe would inexorably continue expanding, so I hold few antibodies to defend against this unlikely experience. I reframe until I appear blue in the face, but all to little avail. I feel altogether too much of a world that seems to exclude altogether too much of myself. I feel older than my age. My back began bothering me as if I'd been shouldering too great a burden. Weariness haunts me. I declared an obscene number of sick days. I feel defeated much of the time, though little of substance seems to have changed.

Our incumbent trades exclusively in paper tigers, though even the paper kind can still cause real havoc. Yes, the courts will eventually reverse most of the worst offenses. They were still committed, though, and many innocents were unnecessarily violated. I suspect that the reparations will more than overshadow whatever benefits the insurgents imagined they had created. Their cause was never just, and their tactics were never even nearly legal. They provided—and continue to provide—ultimately reassuring evidence of the many benefits our democracy offers. Their actions should reinforce broad support for shoring up precisely what they've sought to dismantle. The memory of the injustice they unleashed should properly live in infamy for all of us, everyone who witnessed this most embarrassing chapter in our nation's history. While witnessing, though, few of us avoided contemplating Surrendering. Exhaustion undermines reason. Weariness diminishes the best of us.

We were supposed to contemplate Surrendering. This age-old tactic was featured in every revolutionary assault on any status quo. Nobody knows how to undermine anything without the eventual willing assent of the opposition. The invader must imagine what is most unlikely to happen because they cannot logically resolve their strategy, either. It was no more reasonable to them than it was to the least of their opponents. They adopted rituals and rules to expressly forbid dissent, understanding that questioning could elicit no reassuring responses. They had to rely upon a twisted faith to sustain themselves intact. They agreed to continue the attack long after any prospect of success, for that tactic represented the only reasonable way they might eventually seize any day. Of course, they will lose, but not until they ruined a succession of days that ultimately seemed to stretch to the very edge of forever. Then they will defeat themselves if only because that's all they were ever really capable of.

We were supposed to seriously contemplate Surrendering. We will have successfully surrendered more times than we will ever care to remember before we eventually succeed. History makes no sense when lived forward and even less sense when considered in reverse. The most fervent patriot often felt defeated at times and only succeeded due to circumstances largely beyond anyone's control. One maintains a largely fictional defense with battle lines in near-constant flux. There can be no resting on any laurels. Indeed, there can be no laurels to even rest upon until long after they were sorely needed. My back ached for no apparent reason before going into what might as well have been a spontaneous reversion. Then my back was no longer "bad." My condition should properly remain an unresolved question while this period of unreason persists. I will not always successfully ward off feelings of helplessness, for everyone stands beyond help sometimes, if not necessarily beyond helplessness. Hopeless seems the more threatening enemy, but even hopelessness cannot defeat us in a single fell swoop. I expect to stoop lower than I ever imagined myself crouching before this unreasoned assault defeats itself. I expect to hold my breath through the worst of it, and to continue contemplating a Surrendering I'll never successfully accomplish.

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