Feeling pretty Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce these days . . .

[hatrack]

"Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit.

The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce ad Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless."

Bleak House

[yorkster]

1. Great and timely citation. Gaw bless ol' Charles Dickens.

I suspect this comparison is all the more on point for the more vine-ripened among us, myself included...

[MineralMan]

2. Nice Dickens reference.

House of Chancery indeed.

[bigtree]

3. I missed the analogy in that with the over 1300 white supremacist domestic terrorists prosecuted

...on charges up to Sedition and Obstruction.

Seen another MAGA riot lately?

"Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it."

Bullfuckingshit.

And let's stop pretending the courts are the only thing standing in Trump's way, as if we're helpless to prosecute our own case at the voying booth against an already convicted sexual assaulter and tax fraudster facing two multi-felony federal indictments.

[hatrack]

4. You were bored enough to respond, so, yeah, cool . . .

.

[bigtree]

5. I have a radar for cynical politics

...it's an anathema to me.

And let's be clear about the author's views of America...

In his travel book, American Notes, Dickens describes Mid-Westerners at dinner as "so many fellow animals", who "strip social sacraments of everything but the mere satisfaction of natural cravings".

"The longer Dickens rubbed shoulders with Americans, the more he realised that the Americans were simply not English enough," says Professor Jerome Meckier, author of Dickens: An Innocent Abroad.

"He began to find them overbearing, boastful, vulgar, uncivil, insensitive and above all acquisitive."

...besides, he didn't reserve his cynical scorn for the courts.

"Washington, Dickens wrote, was the home of "despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; and cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers".

But, by all means, let's use a 19th century British cynic's fiction as an analogy to 21st century prosecutions.

I mean, you wanted to play the literary card...

[Hekate]

7. I think of Dickens as an acute observer of his own time and society, yet still has something to say to us

[tanyev]

6. That gets a rec!