Grim Fairy Tales

Mudly Duckly: The Sequel

I need to update what I posted on my blog in a prior year, just after the Fall of 2008, when I began recalling tales from the Brothers Grimm. As childhood stories kept returning to my mind, I started referring to them as Grim Fairy Tales. I posted them on this blog under the label "Freedom Is  Fragile." Then, several months ago, the story of Little Red Riding Hood came to mind (in which “Granny” was actually a wolf in disguise). The implication of the story is that the wolf ate the oblivious “little girl” for lunch, which brought me to the present day and hour.

Today I am reminded of yet another in my growing list of Grim Fairy Tales, this one called The Pied Piper of Hamelin in which the people hire a man to entice the rats out of their town. The hired man tootles on his pipe, and the rats follow him, lured by his melodic strains. Ultimately he leads them into the river where they meet their drowning demise. Later in the story, the town fails to “pay the piper,” so the man returns, tootling on his pipe once again, but this time, he leads the people's children into a mountain, which shuts behind them, and they are gone forever.

So here we are, Americans today, now well into the Year 2013. It could be argued that we originally followed a Pied Pier in the Fall of 2008 because he was a charismatic man offering strong but delusional enticement. The rotten results were never clearly reported by the so-called "press" that failed to press on matters like the debt, the deficit, and the terror attack at Benghazi, so, in 2012, we gleefully re-installed the very same man. Today we see he has returned to tootle on his pipe again, and again, we gleefully follow as he tootles. 

Could it be that we are just like that pack of rats -- or worse -- another parade of oblivious innocents being led straight into oblivion? Has it occurred to anyone that the Pied Piper was not a friend -- or worse?