One of my favorite stories by Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish author of fairy tales, is “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” As the story goes, there was once an Emperor who was very fond of new clothes and spent all his money on being well dressed. Every day many strangers came into the town where he lived, and among them came one day two swindlers. They let it be known that they were weavers, and they said that they could weave the most magnificent fabrics imaginable. Not only were their colors and patterns uncommonly fine, but clothes made of this cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid.
“Those would be just the clothes for me,” thought the Emperor. “If I wore them, I would be able to discover which men in my empire are unfit for their posts. And I could tell the wise men from the fools. Yes, I certainly must get some of the stuff woven for me right away.” So the Emperor paid the two swindlers a large sum of money to start work at once.
After a period of time, the Emperor was curious about the progress of the weavers, and so he sent a trusted official to check on their work. Yet, when the official looked at the looms, he saw nothing. He looked again, but he still saw nothing. Fearing that he might be unfit for his office or really stupid, he reported to the Emperor that he had never seen such a beautiful piece of goods. When the garment was finished, the swindlers assisted the Emperor and pretended to put his new clothes on him. Then the Emperor began his procession through the streets, proudly displaying his new clothes. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, “Oh, how fine are the Emperor’s new clothes! Don’t they fit him to perfection?”
Nobody would confess that he couldn’t see anything since that would prove that he was either unfit for his position or really stupid. Then suddenly a child cried out, “But he hasn’t got anything on.” One by one the adults began whispering to each other that the child was right. The Emperor had nothing on!
Hans Christian Andersen lived in the 19th Century during the period of the Industrial Revolution in Denmark, and so it was natural for him to cast the swindlers in his story as weavers. In our Information Age, the swindlers do not work with cloth, but rather with phrases and sound bites. They are commonly known as the “spin doctors.” They don’t weave invisible clothes; they spin falsehoods and half-truths. Nevertheless, they are not really very different from Andersen’s swindlers. The arguments and claims of the spin doctors are just as thin and meaningless as the Emperor’s new clothes.
We have recently experienced still another tragedy in our country involving guns, and immediately the spin doctors, our modern swindlers, went to work in order to convince the public that guns are not really the problem. Once again, the Second Amendment has been trotted out as though its message were a self-evident confirmation of the status quo, and our politicians have voiced arguments that any child could see as fallacious. From supposedly competent leaders who don’t want to appear unfit for their positions or just plain stupid, we have heard comments such as “stuff happens”, and we have been told that the problem is not really the guns, but rather the craziness raging throughout our country. I agree about the craziness in American society today, and it is true that guns are the “means”, not the “agent”. But it’s the guns that fire the bullets. So I am waiting for a child to step forward and speak the simple truth to our Congress: “It’s the guns! It’s the guns that are killing people!”
Villager Jack Brush is a frequently Opinion contributor to Villages-News.com
