Navis Stultorum: The [GOP] Ship of Fools

Going “coverless” for far too long on Facebook, I set out on my own ship of Google images foolery, finally landing upon a woodcut from the title page of Sebastian Brant’s 1498 edition of the Stultifera Navis, the “Navis Stultorum” [The Ship of Fools]. (A version of the original can be found at Images from the History of Medicine: http://goo.gl/sMQBy.) As I reinvigorated my atrophying Photoshop skills to convert the image into a form to fill the vast sea of space found in Facebook’s new (to me) feature, I found myself noting how appropriate the fourteenth- to sixteenth-century satirical motif fits with modern Republican Presidential politics. As the “Ship of Fools” motif satirized those with almost utopian madness as a group of deranged and directionless passengers pursuing a “Paradise of Fools,” Mitt Romney’s campaign vows to steer our American ship toward a harbor of prosperity and recovery, but Romney makes such promises only through policies and statements that are either unrealizable, that contradict his own previously held stances, or that gesture towards the failed policies and practices of the Bush administration. With those thoughts in mind, I donned my own foolscap, armed with the bauble of my own recently relearned Photoshop skills, and embarked upon my own satirical journey. I here present you with the fruits of my labor—or madness—or laboring madness—or maddening labor. One thing in certain, we must sink this Ship of [GOP] Fools by November 6, before Mitt and the Republicans can bring our American ship to port in their “Paradise of Fools.” Instead of boarding Mitt’s bark, vote for Barack.