A parable for today

There once was a leader of a great nation who thought he knew everything. His supporters knew he often made mistakes, but they argued no one is perfect.

In the land, severe storms had recently felled trees that damaged parked cars and even killed people. The leader’s friends asked him to spare them. So he decreed, “From this day on, all trees will be cut down.”

“You can’t cut down trees!” even his most ardent supporters told him on the stage from which the leader spoke his Truth. His immediate friends said nothing, hoping he’d change his mind. People who had chosen him for reasons other than wisdom, say, his support of a foreign war, also didn’t doubt him.

Tree by tree was felled. Whole forests disappeared. Groves were downed. Orchards went by the wayside.  Copses became corpses. Stand by stand, thicket by thicket, the country was denuded.

Long before the last chainsaw and bulldozer did its job, all humans and other living things were left gasping. The leader’s health czar called it a mystery. The leader himself blamed Russia, possibly China.

He was re-elected for a third term because his supporters no longer believed in a written plan of government. He ruled from an oxygen tent inside the White House. There were no more parties in the private dance hall he’d built. In fact, there were no more good times.