Alan Zendell, April 8, 2024

In Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the protagonist, Hank Porter, suffers a head injury and somehow wakes up in 6th century England. When he is brought to King Arthur’s court as a prisoner, the court magician, Merlin, decrees that Porter must be burned at the stake. As an engineer in 1887, Porter was well educated in a world that even then was still steeped in ignorance, fear, and superstition. In 528 A. D., in the court of King Arthur, Porter realizes he is probably the smartest, most knowledgeable person in the world.

Fortunately, Porter knows from his study of history and science, that there was a full solar eclipse that year, and as best he can reckon, it is about to occur. He uses his knowledge to proclaim that he has the power to control the sun, and the combination of superstition and the eclipse saves him from being burned alive.

Twain’s story, like most of his works, was a parody of the ignorance, politics, and social values of his time, made sharper by the enormous gulf of knowledge that separated the 6th and 19th centuries. Fast forward to 2024, and the contrast is even more stark. We knew the times and places today’s eclipse would occur to within seconds and fractions of a mile, and rather than greeting it with fear, millions of people, businesses, and media are celebrating it like a once in a lifetime event.

The public’s reaction to the eclipse tells me two things. One is that we no longer live in an age of scientific ignorance. The average American, today, understands that the eclipse is simply an astronomical accident, an unusual moment when a straight line can be drawn between the positions of Earth, the moon, and the sun. I find it uplifting to realize that at least in this area, truth and science have overcome fear and ignorance.

But back to Mark Twain’s perception of America in 1887, it makes me wonder if the joyous celebration of four minutes of darkness just after noon means we’ve actually evolved past the cult-like ignorance of the past. Sadly, when the calendar flips to April 9th, the bonding excitement of the eclipse will be in the past, and we’ll be back in our 2024 reality. Looked at objectively, that reality is almost as frightening as what Twain’s Porter found in the 6th century.

We may have learned that the sky is not the home of vindictive, sociopathic gods that spend their days toying with us mere humans. We may have learned that the only things up there are billions, perhaps trillions of stars, planets, moons, asteroids and a virtually infinite volume of empty space, but look at what we have forgotten.

What we seem most to have forgotten is that in a world with no absolute standards and values, everything eventually comes apart. That’s true in the physical world – the Second Law of Thermodynamics tell us that everything tends to randomness if we fail to enforce order. It’s equally true in the world of human interaction. In the absence of truth and facts that everyone can believe in, the only possible outcome is chaos and devastation.

It’s a cliché that “everything is relative.” That notion is effective in alerting us to different aspects and points of view. But in reality, taken to its limits, the lack of absolute truths we all believe in is as frightening a proposition as the idea of burning someone at the stake because they’re different from us.

Our nation is presently caught in a very dangerous trap. We appear to be forever stuck in divisiveness and impasse, because of a relatively small group of angry extremists. These people found a leader who understood that if you corrupt truth and replace belief in science with cult-like nonsense, when you’re successful, as Kellyanne Conway was, in convincing people that “alternative facts” are as relevant as real ones, it’s possible to undermine and destroy institutions and values that have defined us for 250 years.

This can only occur when we forget that everything we’ve fought for as a nation requires constant vigilance. Look away for a moment, and someone like Donald Trump will always emerge to fill the vacuum left when we’re too tired or lazy to fight to preserve our legacy.

Today’s eclipse is a wonderful, exciting moment in time that in a very real way represents the exact opposite of the world Donald Trump foresees. He wants to govern our nation as an autocrat, based on whatever prejudice or hateful thing occurs to him at each moment. He has no respect for the millions of people who have sacrificed to preserve the legacy we inherited. He can only win if we all throw in the towel and conclude that it’s no longer worth fighting for.