https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2020/12/27/the-emperor-has-no-clothes-a-tale-for-the-times-n1287449
Hans Christian Andersen’s celebrated folk tale The Emperor’s New Clothes serves as a parable for our ideological age and in particular for the current political environment in the U.S. in which a presidential election has been stolen from the people by massive and undoubted electoral fraud.
We remember how the tale begins. A team of weavers come to town and convince the Emperor that they can weave him a magical suit of clothes of unsurpassed magnificence that can also serve to distinguish the foolish from the wise. Only those unfit for the jobs and positions they hold will not be able to see it; the rest will be in awe of the beauty of the apparel. The weavers pretend “to work at the empty looms until late at night…cutting the air with their scissors and sewing with needles without any thread in them.”
The Emperor sends his emissaries to examine the wondrous cloth. Unwilling to admit that they see nothing, thus exposing themselves as nitwits, they return full of praise for the invisible stuff. “What a splendid design! What glorious colors!” they gush. Meanwhile “the thieves ask for more silk and gold to complete what they had begun and put all that was given them into their knapsacks.” When all is ready and the Emperor properly fitted, he appears in public “walking under his high canopy” in a grand procession “through the streets of his capital.” The people are amazed by the spectacle. “‘Oh! How beautiful are our Emperor’s new clothes!’ they cry. ‘What a magnificent train there is to the mantle; and how gracefully the scarf hangs!’ No one would admit that these much admired clothes could not be seen because, in doing so, he would have been saying he was either a simpleton or unfit for his job.”
Except, of course, for the proverbial “little child,” the incarnation of innocence and honesty, who speaks the truth—“But the Emperor has nothing at all on!”—and manages to convey his message to the crowd. “What the child has said was whispered from one to another.” The Emperor realizes that he has gone from riches to rags. He has no choice but to accept his disgrace and “walk on in his underwear,” while his attendants go through the motions of holding up his train, “although, in reality, there was no train to hold.”
Obviously, the tale cannot be applied point by point to the current situation unfolding in the political theater that passes for an election. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge said in his Biographia Literaria, “No metaphor runs on all four legs.” Nonetheless, there are enough similarities to establish the story as a political primer, with variations and idiomatic applications, for the sordid scene we are witnessing daily. The sartorial travesty is or should be plain for all to see.