You needn't watch the embedded videos if you don't want. They're here to provide color and background, but the gist of these ravings will be just as irrational without them as with them.
The King of England came and gave a speech to Congress. Gavin Ashenden had thoughts. Gavin rightly pointed out that the King essentially said all faiths are the same. I argue that it was more than that, it's that the King thinks they're all also little more than personal taste preferences.
The speech, Gavin's typically excellent analysis and other recent events from across the pond makes me think of this scene from Live and Let Die. This scene is the source of the title of this post.
I discussed the matter with AI and we came to this summary.
I then asked it to generate a scene where Basil, an orthodox Anglican determined to defend the faith even if he's the last one doing it, holds forth. I rather liked the results. Enjoy.
The night had settled over the river like a soft, humid cloak, thick with the scent of water and pine and something faintly sweet that drifted in from the marsh. The porch boards held the day’s heat, giving it back slowly, as though reluctant to surrender the sun entirely. Fireflies stitched erratic constellations over the dark water, blinking in and out like faulty lanterns in the hands of invisible ferrymen.
At the far end of the porch, Basset Hound General Beauregard lay on his side, snoring with the deep, rhythmic authority of a man who had fought a war, won it, and now felt no further obligation to remain conscious. Every so often one long ear twitched, as though even in sleep he were issuing minor corrections to the universe.
Closer to the railing, Cat sat upright, tail wrapped neatly around his paws, eyes fixed on the fireflies. He was not watching them for their beauty. He was watching them because things that moved like that—irregular, flickering, unpredictable—often distracted the smaller, dumber creatures of the night. And distracted creatures made mistakes. Cat believed deeply in mistakes.
Behind him, in the pool of lamplight, Bobby Lee Bond leaned back in his chair, boots crossed, one hand resting loosely on his stomach, the other holding a glass of amber liquid that caught the light just enough to glow. The drink—his “Cat Behaves”—smelled faintly of citrus and something sharper beneath it. A Perdomo Lot 23 smoldered between his fingers, sending up a slow, contemplative ribbon of smoke.
Across from him, Basil had achieved a posture that suggested both leisure and imminent attack. One leg crossed elegantly over the other, pipe angled just so, gin and tonic resting untouched at his elbow—he looked, at first glance, like a man content with the world.
He was not.
“—I say, Bobby,” Basil began, with the particular clipped intensity that meant a speech was not merely forthcoming but inevitable, “the difficulty is not that the fellow is insincere. Oh no. That would be almost a relief. One could deal with insincerity. One could call it out, expose it, have done with it. No, no—the trouble is that he appears to believe what he’s saying, and that is infinitely more alarming.”
Bobby took a slow draw from his cigar, eyes half-lidded, letting Basil gather steam. He had learned, over the years, that Basil required a certain runway.
Cat flicked an ear back, listening. This would be interesting. Basil in full cry was one of the more reliable entertainments of the civilized world.
“You see,” Basil continued, tapping the bowl of his pipe lightly against the armrest for emphasis, “a man in his position—Defender of the Faith, no less—cannot, simply cannot, speak of faith as though it were a matter of seasonal preference. ‘This year, we are terribly keen on mutual understanding, old boy. Next year, perhaps a dash of transcendence, if it’s not too frightfully inconvenient.’”
He took a sharp breath, then pressed on.
“I mean to say, one imagines what my great-great-grandfather Fitzallen would have made of it. The man was shot through the lung at Inkerman and still managed, while bleeding rather alarmingly into his tunic, to inform a rather startled Russian officer that Anglican doctrine was not, in fact, a matter for polite negotiation.”
Bobby smiled faintly.
“I’m sure that clarified things for the Russian,” he said.
“It clarified everything,” Basil snapped. “That is precisely the point. Clarity! The man knew what he believed, knew it to be true, and behaved accordingly. None of this—this—this ghastly business of suggesting that all roads lead to the same destination so long as we hold hands and speak in soothing tones.”
Cat’s tail gave a small, approving twitch. He did not much care for roads, destinations, or hand-holding, but he approved of clarity. Clarity meant fewer surprises. Fewer surprises meant fewer interruptions to his plans.
Basil leaned forward now, warming to his theme.
“And then there was Fitzallen the Elder—1789, Paris, most unfortunate business—who was asked, quite directly, whether he thought the Church might accommodate itself to the new spirit of the age. Do you know what he said?”
“I suspect you’re about to tell me,” Bobby murmured.
“He said, ‘Sir, the Church accommodates itself to nothing. It is the world that must accommodate itself to the Church, or perish attempting the alternative.’ And then, I might add, he had the good sense to leave the country before anyone could object too strenuously.”
Bobby took another sip of his drink, letting the citrus bite settle.
“You’re describing a world,” he said quietly, “where there was less… room.”
“Room?” Basil repeated, as though the word itself were faintly obscene. “My dear fellow, we are not discussing upholstery. We are discussing truth. Truth does not require room. It requires recognition.”
He gestured broadly with his pipe, nearly losing a small shower of ash onto the porch.
“When a man stands before a nation—before your nation, I might add—and speaks as though the profound differences between belief systems can be resolved by ‘dialogue,’ he is not merely being polite. He is suggesting that the differences themselves are somehow secondary. That they are, what—misunderstandings? Linguistic accidents? Slight variations in taste?”
Cat turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing. Basil was circling something now, something sharper.
“And they are not,” Basil pressed on. “They are claims about the nature of reality itself. About God. About man. About sin and redemption and the entire blasted structure of existence. These are not trifles to be sorted out over tea.”
Beauregard snorted loudly in his sleep, then settled again, as though registering a mild objection from the depths of unconsciousness.
Bobby let the silence stretch for a moment.
“Let me ask you something, Basil,” he said finally. “Do you think he believes any of it?”
Basil paused. Just for a moment.
“That,” he said more slowly, “is the most unsettling possibility of all. That he believes in something—but not in the way that requires him to risk anything for it.”
Cat’s ears tilted forward. Now that was interesting.
Basil leaned back again, but the intensity did not leave him.
“You see, Bobby, a man who truly believes—truly believes that he has grasped something about the ultimate structure of reality—cannot treat it as one option among many. He may be courteous, he may be restrained, he may even choose his words carefully—but he cannot, in the end, pretend that contradictions are merely… decorative.”
Bobby nodded slightly, the glow of his cigar lighting his face for a moment.
“That’s about right,” he said.
They sat in silence for a while after that.
The river moved, slow and dark. The fireflies continued their erratic dance. Somewhere in the brush, something small made a mistake.
Cat’s eyes sharpened.
Basil, having exhausted his immediate supply of Fitzallens, took up his gin and tonic at last and drank deeply, as though fortifying himself for the next round.
Bobby leaned back, smoke drifting upward, and said nothing.
On the far end of the porch, Beauregard snored on, entirely untroubled by questions of truth, monarchy, or the fate of Western civilization.
Cat rose silently, slipped into the darkness, and went to see about the mistake.
