The Divine Tragedy

 

There are very few truly perfect things in our current climate. There’s the evenly-seeded everything bagel, untoasted, lathered with a reasonable amount of cream cheese, and sliced with symmetrical precision. Then there’s the sense of the sublime which occurs after slipping into a certain breed of parking space, one found in heavy traffic amid a row of frozen cars, revealing itself like a genuine oasis hidden behind an obscuring bumper. And then, there’s Twitter. It’s the closest thing we have to the Library of Alexandria, the nearest thing we have to The School of Athens. It's Pee-wee’s Playhouse without any sniff of scandal, hint of controversy, or musk of outrage. 

Yes, it’s all too true. Twitter is the “paradiso” Signore Alighieri must’ve been rhyming about all those centuries ago. And to think, I thought he was going on a long, stultifying walk through the forest. Twitter is where discourse comes to prosper, where the benefit of the doubt is extended to one and all, and where debate is sacrosanct. Here, disagreements flower like a magnolia in spring. Which is to say, they only last a couple weeks. 

And for all you free speechers out there, please take note. The First Amendment is about the government meddling with free expression, not about the culture formed in a society devoid of context or principles. I bought my pitchfork without a single federal subsidy, thank you very much. Say I’m going to a late afternoon book burning, that’s not politicians getting involved on the local level. It’s simply a group of concerned citizens who care about kindling. Anyone can torch anything during the dead of winter. However, it takes a level of commitment to the cause (and a tolerance for sweat or a predilection for arson) to create a deckle edged inferno in the doggiest days of summer. Angry mobs are a part of any healthy democracy. Otherwise, who would be able to read every problematic cartoon in circulation? Is that a symbol of a hate or am I just watching The Producers with the sound down?

So I suppose the right question to ask at this juncture is: how can Twitter get any better? It’s like asking what makes a sunset more beautiful (which, from my rudimentary understanding of color hues is actually pollution and out of control forest fires, but never mind that). The point is that Twitter is perfection. It doesn’t need our interference. Perfect things don’t get better. They go stale quickly and lose their shine. That bagel you loved so well and so long, but didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to finish? Well, it’s harder than an exposed outcropping of Manhattan schist. Or that parking space which proved the existence of a just and benevolent God? It isn't Sunday anymore and even God tickets on weekdays. 

I suppose Twitter is the next thing to lose its former luster. Profiles have replaced passports and DNA sequences as the preeminent mode of identification. It’s absolutely terrifying to imagine what comes next. There are 44 billion possibilities and I can’t think of a single good one. Can you?