We’re All Mad Here

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk,” said the Cat. “

“–so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough!”

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. “What sort of people live about here?”

“In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter; and in that direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like; they’re both mad.”

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remaked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat; “we’re all mad here.”

Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland, 1862

This passage from Lewis Carrol’s “Alice in Wonderland” might apply to our political process had it been written today instead of in 1862.