A Bewildering Level of Unfathomable Absurdity

Sometimes a random quotation has the quality of door standing slightly ajar with a note with the words “Enter - I dare you” pinned to it. Alice - she of Through the Looking Glass fame - was faced with a similar invitation when confronted with a little bottle “‘which was certainly not there before’ said Alice — and tied around the neck of the bottle was a paper label with the words DRINK ME beautifully printed on it in large letters.” which she did, leading to all sorts of adventures.

A hat tip to Tim Purcell and his colleagues at The Lykeion in their recent March Geopolitical Update — a subscription to which I cannot endorse enthusiastically enough — who quoted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as commenting on the US sanctions regime against his country as “a bewildering array of unfathomable absurdity”, a turn of phrase so good that I can only assume that Mr. Wang spent a good deal of his education at one of the better English schools or Universities. Only someone who has been in the company of acerbic English dons at Oxford or future senior civil servants and practiced the art of the crushing riposte could possibly come up with a line like that. It’s up there on a level with Sir Robert Armstrong’s as British cabinet secretary, in the 'Spycatcher' trial (1986), conducted to prevent publication of a book by a former MI5 employee, response, when accused of lying that his statement 'contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth. '