I get most of my news during the ten-minute haze after I first wake up. When I hear politicians using the term ‘fairy dust’, it only makes sense. I’m still half-asleep; this must be my dark dreamworld blending with the real.
But no. Those we have elected to govern use this phrase.
From what I can tell, its use began during the season of mists as a punning turn of phrase. It has now come to represent what ‘lipstick on a pig‘ used to — an effort to make something essentially flawed appear better than it is. I detect a touch of the ethereal in its use as well, as with ‘vaporware‘.
I have sounded this trumpet before, and will likely do so again: do not mess with beings both old and powerful.
Fairy dust can grant people the ability to fly if they simply think happy thoughts. It is generated in some way (perhaps some sort of excretion) by the fey folk of Neverland, a wild and foreign country to which England’s missing children are sent. These fairies are a dangerous ally at best. Fickle, violent, jealous, and capable of holding only a single emotion at one time, to include them in your life is to add the unpredictable — and not always in a fun way.
There is one aspect of the fairies which it would serve us to not forget: they are immortal. If one dies, they can be brought back to life with the power of applause.
You have got to be careful with this stuff. Contact between Neverland and our world has been documented only rarely, but we have no way of knowing how many people have been abducted by shadowless foreigners. If children clapping can resurrect one of these beings, what unknown powers are wielded when America’s mighty speak of their dust?
