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Tuesday
Where does one find a word to describe one’s joy at over seven million Americans turning out for Sunday’s No Kings marches? (The seven million included 225 that gathered here in ruby red Winchester, Tennessee.) William Kristol, editor of the conservative Never-Trump Bulwark, turned to a nonsense classic for a work that would capture his elation: frabjous.
Revealing that he didn’t initially think he would be moved by the protests, he was caught off balance by them. As he found himself surrounded by prancing inflatable characters, witty signs, and honking horns, he thought of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.”
The poem, which is stuffed full of nonsense words—more on these in a moment—describes a heroic quest in which a youth goes in search of the fearsome Jabberwock, which features eyes that flame, “jaws that bite,” and “claws that catch.” Fortunately he is carrying a “vorpal blade,” which he uses to good effect. Here’s the poem:
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Alice comes across the poem in Looking Glass World but it takes Humpty Dumpty to explain the language. Many of the nonsense words, he says, are like a portmanteau, where “there are two meanings packed up into one word.” Unpacking “frabjous,” Kristol says that it’s a combination of “fabulous” and “joyous.” (Maybe “ferocious” can fit in that portmanteau as well.) The mood in Maclean and around the country, he reports, “was certainly joyous. And it was fabulous that some seven million people assembled peacefully and patriotically to protest Donald Trump and reaffirm their allegiance to the American idea.”
“On Saturday,” he continues,
the American people assembled lawfully on behalf of the rule of law. On Saturday, the American people demonstrated their commitment to keeping this a free country. Mike Johnson and all his fellow pro-Kings propagandists hoped for violence, extremism, and evidence of hate for America. But instead they saw peace, patriotism, and loyalty to America.
It was a frabjous day.
For all of Saturday’s optimism, Kristol acknowledges that “there’s a long struggle ahead against the sustained attack on our freedom by those in charge.” The quest to defeat our jabberwock requires courage and determination. And venturing into the tulgey wood.
The first step, however, involves overcoming fatalism and lassitude. Saturday’s march helped with that. So far, anti-dictator marches have drawn three million, then five million, now over seven million. As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow observed last night, at this rate we may reach the 12 million mark, which would be 3.5 % of the population. According to Erica Chenoweth of Harvard’s Kennedy School, who studies social movements, “Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.”
Callooh! Callay!
