Political Lessons from Lewis Carroll

Looking back, the Biden-Harris years are marred by profound breaches of public trust. No faithful hand are they, overspending, second-order effects, inflation, high interest, distress, distrust, failed accountability. Watching  Biden-Harris morph into Harris-Walz, Lewis Carroll comes to mind.

That Lewis Carroll? Yes. Author of children’s fiction, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass?  Yes. He warned with whimsy against bold, well-disguised invitations to peril.

Oxford don J.R.R. Tolkien created a world of fiction, Lord of the Rings, elves and orcs, Frodo and Sam, Gandalf, Shadow-fax, Sauron and Mordor … that was viewed by dissidents in the former Soviet Union as the great battle they faced, good versus evil.

Similarly, Oxford author C.S. Lewis, deep among deep, created his allegorical Chronicles of Narnia, to help the world, children, and parents understand Christianity, with Aslan, the Table, many turns.

Perhaps it is a stretch to apply Lewis Carroll, Alice falling down a “rabbit hole” – suddenly facing deception, distortion, disorientation, truth as untruth, untruth as truth – to the current days. Or not.

The purpose of those two books, beyond entertainment, was to warn a young girl, as she is growing up, that the world is not always as you see it, and that people will say and do things to trick you.

How did Carroll do this? How can he help us, even now? Interestingly, he tells stories within stories, the way Cervantes – another fiction writer – conducted a “play within a play” with Don Quixote.

For Carroll, he knows a child’s attention span is limited – a disease catchy these days among adults – so creates poems meant to captivate the young reader or listener, teach a lesson, and give a warning.

While the poems seem simple, silly, nonsensical, and fantastical fiction, they are not; they are observations of the world, through a child’s eyes and the tolerance for the crazy, and cautions.

Jump to the present – before you read a selection from Looking Glass, and think: What are we seeing today if not simple, silly, nonsensical, fantastical fiction, dressed up as serious politics?

In Looking Glass, Caroll makes the case – to kids – that trickery and treachery are soulless. They do not care about you, and so bad things come from not thinking for yourself, and following the crowd.

Fittingly, the poem – “The Walrus and the Carpenter” – is recited to Alice by Tweedledum and Tweedledee, two characters identical to each other, not unlike the sadly similar Harris and Walz.

In sum, the poem describes a trick, the Walrus and Carpenter walking a beach, inviting the sea’s oysters to follow them along the pleasant stretch, which young oysters do – older do not –  after which … all the young oysters are eaten.

 “The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright – And this was odd, because it was, The middle of the night.”

Tweedledum and Tweedledee mix truism with nonsense: “The sea was wet as wet could be, The sands were dry as dry; You could not see a cloud, because No cloud was in the sky: No birds were flying overhead – There were no birds to fly.”

Carroll then introduces his manipulative characters, “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” who walk the beach. “O Oysters, come and walk with us! The Walrus did beseech. A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the briny beach: We cannot do with more than four, To give a hand to each.”

Thus invited, the older oysters say no, but not the younger. “Thick and fast they came at last, And more, and more, and more – All hopping through the frothy waves, And scrambling to the shore.”

In an epic, often wildly interpreted verse, Carroll wrote on moments of truth: “’ The time has come,’ the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes – and ships – and sealing-wax – Of cabbages – and kings – And why the sea is boiling hot – And whether pigs have wings.’”

What follows is the Walrus and Carpenter turning on their naïve followers, gobbling them up. “’ It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said, To play them such a trick, After we’ve brought them out so far, And made them trot so quick!’ The Carpenter said nothing but ‘The butter’s spread too thick!’” The poem ends with the line “They’d eaten everyone.”

So, what is the moral? Watch closely. Beware empty purveyors of nonsense made to sound serious,  for like the Jabberwocky, tricksters walk the land and what you grab … may not be a faithful hand.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.