Quote of the Post

Democracy is not a noun. Democracy is a verb. 

 Timothy Snyder (this is a paraphrase from memory)

Quote of the Post

 "Socialism is a scare word they've hurled at every advance the people have made. Socialism is what they called public power, social security, deposit insurance, and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for anything that helps the people."

Harry S. Truman

Quote of the Post

 "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Second Inaugural

On the Inauguration of Donald Trump

             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?
  William Butler Yeats

Perspective

  Regular and astute readers of these blogs, if any, may have noticed that my prediction concerning Donald Fucking Fucking Trump, and his ability to win the presidency, was a bit off. Tomorrow, the electors will meet across the nation to actually elect that... person: barring, of course, the miracle of thirty seven or more of his electors voting against Trump as the Constitution allows.
  I no longer hope for miracles.
  The time has come to look at the next President of the United States.
  Since the election, sane people have been hoping that sanity will somehow prevail in a Trump presidency. These people desperately wish that, when it comes to governing, the better angels of Trump's nature will guide him to lead the country in some semblance of a democratic republic. These people are wrong.
   In analyzing Trump, binocular vision is wasted. We have already seen all there is to see. Trump is a self-absorbed, preening buffoon. I will not be so niggardly as to limit him to only one dimension- or even two, but the man has no real depth. Trump is nothing more than a bas-relief, carved in sand.
 Trump is already hiding behind his many minions, who try to put a sane face on an insane man. The Trump presidency will be disastrous. How far will he go? What damage will he do? What price will we pay before he is finished?
  I no longer hope for miracles.