The Fool’s Reckoning

So merrily we scorned the wise,
   and merrily lay us down,
and death, that had no need to lie,
   did take us for his own.

Still trying to wrap my head around the unrelenting idiocy and farsical contentions about Dr. Fauci and the Covid pandemic, which run the gamut from misunderstanding to delusional, it is evident to me that evidence is a waste of effort, logical analysis is ignored, and rationality has fled the country. 

So I turn to a Shakespearean-style approach, where the actual intent may be invisible to those I poke fun of here, but the rational among my friends will find it amusing.

And if you've never read Shakespeare...well, that might just explain it.

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An Ode to the Folly of Fools

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Enter Fool, singing.

Marry, sir, I’ll tell you a riddle, and you shall be the wiser for not solving it. Which is the greater fool: he that knows nothing and says so, or he that knows nothing and swears it physic? Nay, answer not, for the answer wears your coat.

He sings.

When that the cough came knock, knock, knocking,

   with a hey, and the wind, and the rain,

“‘Tis nothing,” quoth he, at his own mock mocking,

   and coughed himself under again.

 

Here’s a marvel: a man will not trust the physician, that studied the pox forty year, yet will trust the fellow at the alehouse, that studied the bottom of his cup. He calls the one a schemer and the other a sage. Why, so the drowning man calls the rope a serpent and the anchor a friend.

They tell me one Fauci is a conjurer, that raised a plague from smoke to fright the people. A wondrous conjurer, that his spell should kill the very folk who’ll not believe in it! There’s faith for you, nuncle: they’ll die sooner than be saved by a man they mislike. That’s a proud stomach, to starve because the cook frowned.

He sings.

He that will not the doctor heed,

   because he loves his own conceit,

shall have his liberty indeed,

   and lie full free beneath the sheet.

 

A wise man dies and knows the cause. A fool dies and blames the leech, the state, the star, the schemer, and the moon, and so hath five griefs where he needed but one grave. Give me the wit that owns its ignorance, sir; ’tis cheaper by a funeral.

Take heed, take heed. The fool that thinks he’s wise walks singing off the cliff, and swears the ground betrayed him.

He sings, going out.

So merrily we scorned the wise,
   and merrily lay us down,
and death, that had no need to lie,
   did take us for his own.