Flowers For America

I gave up on Alexis De Tocqueville's 'Democracy In America'.

Not because I found any fault in his analysis.  But because I found him far too prescient.

He spoke of the faults of democracy, as well as the glories, and explained just how the glories would become the faults without careful attention.

Well, that attention was given, until the turn of the twentieth century, and then the attention not only waned, but was twisted, so that the country changed tack by at least ninety degrees, if not 180.

I could not finish the book because in each and every one of his warnings I saw Exactly what we have become under a series of  'leaders' beginning with Theodore Roosevelt, and dragging through those who have followed him into the abyss where this nation currently rests.

So, I took him back to the library.

There, on the 'New Books' shelf was a novel I read more than forty years ago, in a new, 'Modern Classics' edition.

It is a book written by Daniel Keyes, titled 'Flowers For Algernon'.

They actually made a pretty decent movie from it, called 'Charlie'.

It is the story of a super-mouse named Algernon, who was a part of an experiment to greatly increase intelligence, and the man who was the first human subject of that experiment.

Told in the words of Charlie Gordon, it is the tale of a young man who has lived his life as a moron, but always wanted to be more.  On the recommendation of a teacher for 'retarted adults' Charlie undergoes the same operation and regimen  as Algernon, and becomes, essentially, the most intelligent man on Earth.

For a while.

As he grows in intelligence, Charlie finally sees that those he always thought of as friends were treating him cruelly, until he became so intelligent that they feared him instead.

But it does not last.  Nothing really lasts, in this world.

During this story, Charlie goes from an IQ of 68, to well over 200.

And back.

The very last sentence in the book is this, with Charlie's misspellings;

"P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard,"

America was born as a moron in the eyes of the aristocratic world, and became a genius.  But not any more.  Our decline is just exactly the same, and exactly as sorrowful, as Charlie's.

Please, if you get a chance, put some flowers on America's grave, in the back yard of history.