The State

One of the finest books on American Democracy was written by Alex Tocqueville in 1835. The two volume Democracy in America is rich in observation and insight, as relevant now as then, and frighteningly relevant to what we now take for granted throughout much of the Western World. 

Talking about bad government, he writes:

‘It does not tyrannise, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.’  

To be honest, I  think Tocqueville here unfairly maligns the ‘shepherd’. My initial reaction was to suggest replacing 'shepherd'  with 'wolf' but then I'd be guilty of maligning wolves, known for their nobility, intelligence, courage, and loyalty to the pack. 

So, if not shepherd or wolf, what then? Maggot, is a nice suggestive image. In Tocqueville's words:

'each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the maggot.' 

It nicely conjure up the image of the nation as a mound of flesh writhing in parasites, but then maggots are comparatively mindless, motivated purely by a lust to feed. 

Finally, I arrived at the frightening parasitic fungus —Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. Now this works:  ‘each nation. . . being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is a parasitic fungus.' (The full term Ophiocordyceps unilateralis being a bit of a mouthful.) 

Happy New Year!

By David P. Hughes, Maj-Britt Pontoppidan - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0004835, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17917778