I Would Plant Dahlias

 A few years ago I brought in some bagged soil to dress a flower bed. The next spring I noticed a new low-growing weed which I dispatched with the hoe. Before long, it was back again. I hoed again and so on and so on again and again. In spite of my efforts, the weed is winning, having spread to two other flower beds. I enlisted help from the plant community at Dave's Garden where the invader was identified as field bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis. This is a particularly invasive weed, spreading by seed and rhizomes. The rhizomes may be several feet deep. Persistent hoeing every few days may eventually exhaust the rhizomes, but it could take years. Chemicals like Roundup are no longer allowed. One gardener suggests that dahlias suppress bindweed, more fun than the hoe and more natural than glyphosate. Of course I could just let the bindweed grow and enjoy the little pink flowers when they come. Live and let live and forget nurturing the cultivars. 

Whatever. I suspect the bindweed will outlive me and overrun the neighbourhood. I may return in spirit after a few decades to see everything bedecked in bindweed. Many thanks to the company that sold me weedy soil. 

Sorry. Don't mean to sound grumpy. I admit that weeds are really good at escaping notice. Even a fragment of root could start a new invasion.

Here comes a metaphor. First a disclaimer: a metaphor proves nothing. It is a way of easing an idea into mind by noting its similarity to something already experienced and well understood. Later, comprehension can be improved by noting how the metaphor doesn't quite fit.

Bindweed cares nothing for the shrub on which it twines as it reaches for the sun. It's just looking out for itself'. So I am thinking of bindweed as a metaphor for narcissistic in-group orientation of all kinds: fraud and criminality, snobbery, tribalism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, dogmatism, xenophobia, sexism, racism, whatever inspires US to use and abuse THEM.

Russian imperialism, white supremacy, drug dealers, Facebook trolls, paranoid people with guns spreading their hatred in the dark and sprouting everywhere to murder children: you can't get rid of this stuff with a hoe. It spreads out of sight until it pops up and strangles the peace we have cultivated with such care. 

Unless you plant dahlias; then beauty has a chance.

The metaphor is truncated here with a question. What is the social analogue of the dahlia? 

I would plant dahlias.