Almost two and a half thousand years ago Greek plays were performed in outdoor theaters in front of audiences sometimes as large as nineteen thousand people. The Greek dramas were then in many ways what movies, tv, radio, and magazines are to us today– public sources for political and social commentary, information, and entertainment.
Sometimes an actor, playing a ‘god,’ would be lowered from above by mechanical devices wherein the god would usually bring about some sort of resolution to the conflict that would have otherwise been impossible (by mere mortals). In Latin this ‘god saving the day’ became known as deus ex machina (god from the machine). Deus ex machina has come to connote any time an author brings about an incredible, all too-easy, resolution to a story.
Law makers today, those Lords in Washington, seem to believe in the god from the machine. They seem convinced that no matter what they do, no matter how much they grow government, no matter how much they stifle personal freedom, no matter how much they increase fees, costs, and taxes, no matter how much they contradict principles of a free-market capitalistic republic, no matter how much they actually propose and commit acts seen before only in distopias of fiction and tyrannical regimes of history, that somehow things are just going to end up okay. They seem to trust blindly to some god of ____________ (fill in the blank) to come down from the rafters and save the day.
Let’s remember that sometimes the gods choose to leave us to our own devices, sometimes the mortals are allowed to be devoured by the Kraken… even a Kraken created by their own actions.
Some believe Obama to be the god from the machine himself.
Others would liken Washington to the Kraken.
Odd But Not Unusual 