I have a college friend who is now a Libertarian (don’t ask) in Florida, and active in Libertarian groups. He sometimes asks for help for his unusual activities, and I help when I can. Yesterday, he said that he wanted to rewrite the words to Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Modern Major General” to reflect a Libertarian leader. I suggested the following (and if any of you have more ideas, pass them on to me, and I will forward them – unless he is reading this now):

“I am a very, very modern Libertarian
I’m positive I’m negative and also quite contrarian,

I criticize the government in manners quite formidable,

I trash with glee the programs that I think are just goodridable.”

Does anybody but me (now and again) listen to Gilbert and Sullivan these days? My guess is that no one does, and G&S Societies seem to have pretty much disappeared, but I find Gilbert to be perhaps the most clever librettist in the history of the world, and his satirical approach to world politics and world society may be just what we need today.

“Modern Major General” is from “Pirates of Penzance” – the story of poor Frederick who has been mistakenly bound to a pirate king until his 21st birthday (his nursemaid thought she was apprenticing him to a “pilot”), and whose future is further garbled by the question of when someone born on February 29 celebrates his 21st.

We went to Penzance (it’s a port in English Cornwall) years ago, and didn’t see any pirates. But it turns out that Penzance has quite a pirate history. Here is the way I remember the story (not from our visit, but from reading various things); I can’t vouch for it being 100% true (or even 10%) true, but I like the story so much that I am going to repeat it with the request that you repeat it over and over again, the goal being to turn it into historic truth whether or not it ever happened. Here goes:

Portugal, at the insistence of Spain, expels its Jews in 1497. Many go to Holland, the one place in Europe that they have a modicum of religious freedom. Holland, a powerful seafaring nation at the time, colonizes portions of northern Brazil, and some Portuguese/Dutch Jews settle there, especially in and around Recife.

The Portuguese capture the entire of Brazil, and the Dutch are out. The coming of the Portuguese means the coming of the Inquisition, so most Jews leave (think of those who were blown off course to New Amsterdam in 1654), but some stay having converted to Christianity, at least outwardly.

Brazil is the largest source of diamonds for Europe in those days. The Portuguese/Dutch/Christian Jews who stayed in Brazil include very wealthy families involved in the diamond and the shipping industries. Their job is to ship diamonds back to Portugal.

But, in those days, shipping was very risky, and sometimes the winds or the ocean currents blew the ships off course. When the ships were blown too far north, the “pirates” of Penzance would sometimes seize the ships and their valuable cargo and off-load it in Penzance. When they did, they would first stash the diamonds in secret places (such as Jamaica Inn, not far from Cornwall and still there – think Daphne Du Maurier), and then transport them to London (which is where the Portuguese/English/Christian Jewish financiers lived, who made money off this whole business, and who then further transported the diamonds (perhaps legally; this I don’t remember) back to Holland, where the diamond cutters of Antwerp went to work to turn them into jewels, to be distributed throughout Central Europe through a network of financial advisors to kings and counts, often known as Court Jews.

End of story. Fact? Fiction? You tell me.

At any rate, back to Gilbert and Sullivan (who, as you know, didn’t really get along at all) and who had very different visions for their futures.

What other shows do I recommend? “The Mikado” which makes fun of Japan in a way that one of my daughters disapproves of, but which I find very cute. “The Gondoliers”, showing what happens when Spanish “royalty” comes to Venice. “H.M.S. Pinafore” – the Lord High Admiral who has never been to sea. “Trial by Jury”. “Ruddigore”.

Want to know what else I like? “I have a little list.”

By the way, think what Gilbert and Sullivan could do to Donald Trump and the Republican Party. They could do an entire play based on Trump’s performance yesterday, when he told his supporters not to vote, just to watch others vote, because he has plenty of votes, and where he said that Victor Orban (Hungary’s semi-fascist leader) was a great, strong leader of Turkey. Can you imagine what would happen if Biden and his dementia had said these things?

One more thing to think about. Do you think that Recife has changed at all since 1654? Look at this photo.