Turning and turning in a widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
THE BEST LACK ALL. CONVICTION,WHILE THE WORST
ARE FULL OF PASSIONATE INTENSITY.
(From Yeats’ “The Second Coming” )
Willie, you hadn’t seen NUTHIN’ in 1919…
This poem has risen to consciousness literally uncountable times in the last 20 years. When it first happened, I could not have believed that things could continue to fall apart for this long without a “discontinuity”. That may yet happen - any day now…
BTW, when I was a kid, a joke was current: “Why is Latin America like a long-playing record?” Answer 33 1/3 revolutions per minute. Can we quantify our angular momentum at present? We have surely become a banana oligarchy. Sorry to say that Jefferson’s ‘tree of liberty’ is overdue for refreshment. I see no other way.
Our Truly best and brightest do not “qualify” for woke positions in charge of “transforming” the USA.
Alternative decentralized solutions may prove to be an end around the current clearly corrupt system.
I also find A. E. Housman’s “Smooth between sea and land”, written in the year of his death, 1936, coming increasingly to mind. I quoted two stanzas from it as the epigram at the start of Autodesk “Information Letter # 14” thirty-two years ago to-morrow.
Here on the level sand
Between the sea and land,
What shall I build or write
Against the fall of night?Tell me what runes to grave
That hold the bursting wave,
Or bastions to design
For longer date than mine.
Yeah, maybe this poem is over-used. À propos Trump, Yeats’ “These are the Clouds” probably woulda been a better choice. But any way you look at it, we’re screwed.
Excellent choices for poems.
I fear America is ever closer to a Lebanon-style civil war, but on a continental scale.
I’m so distressed right now.
Nobody is doing anything about this.
And nobody will.
Look at what we’ve already swallowed: Mueller, 2 failed impeachments, the raid on Mar a Lago, the appointment of yet another special persecutor (no that’s not a typo).
It’s all been leading up to this.
Our gullet is so distended they can now fly this bomber riiiiight on down our throats.
No help is coming. It’s over. America the light of the world is extinguished. “And we are here as on a darkling plain…”
Don’t get depressed, Hypatia. This has been a long time coming. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it started with Lincoln, or Wilson, or FDR. Unreasonable people can argue that it started in 1619. But all agree we have been on the slippery slope for decades.
And now the end is nigh! No more crying over what has been lost. Instead, we get societal collapse, and a new birth. Unfortunately, there will be no anesthetic available for that birth, and it will hurt a lot. Thereafter, a new generation will have an opportunity to learn the lessons and build a better world.
In the words of the Bard, or at least the googlian bard:
Trump indicted.
A storm is brewing in the land.
Justice will prevail.
So different from the old days when even the DNC was rooting for Trump:
Yea, I remember hearing that. It seemed funny to me even then, really. I mean what made ‘em think that getting a whole bunch of Americans to support Trump wouldn’t make it more likely (not less likely) that he’d win?
I wish they STILL thought he couldn’t win. Then they might stop persecuting the poor guy. I reckon that’s what you were getting at, too, @eggspurt .
My heart is breaking. Trump did so much for Manhattan. To see him dragooned back there in obloquy is unbearable. God bless and keep him, the greatest president of my lifetime.
