As unrest widens in the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy vacillates between support for demonstrators and appeasement of tyrants.
The proposed new budget is claimed to slash, over the next ten years, more than a trillion from the deficit while doubling the national debt and adding nearly two trillion in new taxes.
The Federal Reserve is printing money out of control while nobody is minding the store.
The largest scandal ever to hit the federal government is steadfastly ignored in major news sources, which choose to cover "Fashion Week" instead.
The reigning philosophy of the political elite is summed up in two pictures.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church invites people to spend five minutes in silent meditation, "imagining God saying to each of us, 'You are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.'" (This is not the first time the Pied Piper has conveyed such a message.)
Meanwhile, the Anglican Communion sunders, the Archbishop of Canterbury converts to Islam (just kidding! but -- ?), and Christopher Hitchens, soon to die of esophageal cancer, lectures a Unitarian minister about what it means to be a Christian.
Those at the helm, by denying that objective values exist, are bereft of any moral, political or social compass. Man himself is the measure of all things, and there are none so blind as those who will not see (that they are blind). I do not say there is nothing being done that is right -- especially (and gratifyingly) by those who have the means. But the impact of what is being done wrong on the national and global scale will, at least for the nonce, engulf all smaller efforts.
In the end, which poet will have been right --
William Butler Yeats?
The Second Coming
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre 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.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Or George Meredith?
Lucifer in Starlight
ON a starr'd night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screen'd,
Where sinners hugg'd their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he lean'd,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careen'd,
Now the black planet shadow'd Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that prick'd his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reach'd a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he look'd, and sank.
Around the ancient track march'd, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
Dear Curmudgeon,
ReplyDeleteYou are so not-cheerful that it ironically cheers me up!
FWIW, I never heard of the Pigford class action law suit. Thanks for bringing that up.
And the pictures contrasting Mugabe's paradise with that patched up tent was starkly amazing. 95% unemployment!! Oh man.
I'm not "at hand." I'm right here. Just what does "at hand" mean, anyway? I'm supposed to be at my hand? First, I have two hands, just like everyone else on Earth (well, just like those who have two hands anyway). Secondly, I'm the feet of God, not the hands (that would be Buddha). So if I were "at" anywhere, I would be "at foot." Otherwise, both poems are dead-to-rights (whatever that means).
ReplyDelete"The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity."
ReplyDelete(Full of intensity to shoot down anyone who dares to speak with conviction)
Why should we care about Israel?
ReplyDeleteWhy do we, the US, have to keep them afloat? Its time for them to stand on their own or be defeated. It is hardly our concern.
Beneath the Firmament, support is what you give to an ally. Israel is not some third-world country we can ignore; it always has been and remains our strongest ally in the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteYou may imagine that if the United States abandoned Israel to its fate, the militant Islamists would be content with just the destruction of Israel, and would leave us alone. Not so! There is a reason why they call us "the Great Satan" -- read this piece if you have any doubt.
But think of all the money America would save, by dumping the Israel money-hole...
ReplyDeleteThey take and take and take. What do we get out of the deal? Nothing. I say, let Palestine take it.
Islam will always hate us, that is true as it is bound up in their faith to conquer the West. And they have been succeeding since the West has become a doormat for the rest of the world. Even our very own ABofC supports the Islamification England(whose state religion is Anglican) and Sharia law. What a Judas!
What ever happened to, "There is no salvation except through the Son, Jesus"??
We need to be just as militant ourselves to preserve our faith against those enemies who wish to see us destroyed. And if you think that zionism is our friend, well just look at what zionist groups insist upon. Why, we can't even have a cross on the Whitehouse lawn during Christmas, but the President certainly lights a menorah.
Turning ourback on Israel is like turning our back on our best friend - and only friend in the Mid East we have.
ReplyDelete