Who (or What) Will Be The Pied Piper This Year? Same-Sex Marriage or Iraq?

Or the Economy? Or Abortion? Or Terrorism?
Or the Gas Crisis?

The legend of the Pied Piper is supposedly based on fact. On this day in the year 1284, the German town of Hamelin employed a "ratcatcher" to rid it from an infestation of rats. When the rats were disposed of, however, the town renegged on its fee. Some 130 children were then entranced by the piper and followed him to a mountain where they all disappeared except for one lame boy who could not keep up with the Piper and his happy, dancing little troop. The oldest "evidence" of this event was a stained glass window in Hamelin's church depicting the Piper surounded by children. The actual window has been lost since 1660. The city accounts and reports, however, start in the year 1284. Whatever the cause, a catastrophic event happened to a number of children that year.

Since then, a pied piper has come to mean a person who can mesmerize a group of people and lead them to some fate (good or bad). Kind of like Jesus Christ, but instead of a flute, there's an ignominious crucifix(ion). Updated, some televangelists are pied pipers. In some instances, a pied piper can lead a congregation to heaven or, in some cases, to hell. The piper would, in the latter case, be Satan, yet his followers look upon him as a god.

There are secular and religious charismatic personalities today who can can command legions with their rhetoric. The tunes (rhetoric) can be as different as going forward ...and going backward in worldviews. The tunes can be issued from a podium, a town square or a pulpit. The piper can appeal to the old or to the young. He can make his pipe sound shrill or elegantly soft.


In the case of the pipe and its song, they encapsulate an idea or situation.

And this is where things get more complex: competing ideologies are put in order with the top one becoming the lure. The chief tune that comes out may make hordes of people sing and dance, make them angry or make them fearful.

The Katrina White House

But whatever way they react, it's the way the piper hopes they will react that matters.

I stated that the fate of the followers can be good or bad. Being a piper is not necessarily a bad thing. It is the pipe and its tune that people must pay attention to. In a sense, the piper himself is not as important as the pipe. People being how they are, however, fuse (and confuse) the piper with the pipe and its song.

O.K., let's get out of this metaphor and into reality.

Polls show that the most important things to voters this election year are: the economy, Iraq, healthcare and immigration reform. Secondary are the environment, same-sex marriage, abortion rights and separation of church and state. It is easy to see why the American public places the first four ahead of the second four: they're more immediate and tangible, therefore, more relevant to survival. America always look at the quick fix first. It's a human trait, especially if the problems in front of you hit you more immediately.

Our last decade has been one hell of a roller coaster ride: in 1998, our economy was booming and dot coms were raking in the money even before they went public. "Venture capital" was on everyone's lips. Then came weird events catastrophes: it took almost three agonizing months before we knew who was our next president, the dot coms went broke and we were headed for recession, then 9/11 happened to shock the world. Talk of war and WMDs, Saddam Hussein, rising oil prices put fear into the hearts that, just a few years before had been filled with hope and elation. We went to war with the hope that it would be short. Foreign countries that had mourned for us after 9/11 now were afraid of us. We were a "rogue nation" that couldn't be trusted. We had the sinking feeling that Iraq "liberation" would lead to civil war - almost anarchy - and our feeling was right. And while the war against terrorism and insurgency dragged on, we finally noticed how our own political and social infrastructure had deteriorated: we were in our own civil war, but we called it a "culture war": people were fighting for rights: the right to life, the right to marry, the right to regulate reproduction, the right to immigrate.

So now we're at this point: in recession, escalating war costs, climbing national debt, global warming, soaring medical costs, increased hate crimes and people pointing fingers in all directions, socially, morally, financially.

When we grab on to our pied pipers, we'll grab on hard and fast, we won't look in what direction we're going nor will we care: the music will be too soothing, too "right" for us. The music will lull us with its security. We will not even look back at where we were or who caused all the old problems.

History will be dead.

P.S.:

But let's face it: the only TRUE Pied Piper we've ever really experienced is a cinematic figure, a wonderful pastiche of a personality that exudes LIFE in capital letters: Auntie Mame. Here's a marvelous montage with the song Life's What You Make It sung by the popular Hanna Montana.