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

Quote of the Post

"You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. but I just kept pushing."
Rene Descartes, quoted by Sal Khan at Khan Academy

Descartes makes me feel a bit better about my own shortcomings. (A little-tiny bit.)

I saw this quote during one of Khan's lectures on algebra. I can't remember which one, just now, but I promise to correct it.

Quote of the Post

"One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, 'We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.'"
   Ray Bradbury, The Fog Horn, short story

Fans of Ray Bradbury (and we are legion) know the immense depth and richness that make his stories unforgettable. I've read The Fog Horn perhaps a half-dozen times over the last forty years. It is always as fresh as a slap on the face.

  If you need a list: The Martian Chronicles; Dandelion Wine; The October Country; Something Wicked This Way Comes; Fahrenheit 451; The Illustrated Man; A Medicine for Melancholy and, The Golden Apples of the Sun, which contains the story quoted above. This is a just a partial list, but it should get you started.

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.

Acquainted with the night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.


I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.


I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,


But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky


Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Robert Frost

Always for Faith

Where No Mind Has Gone Before

  September eighth marked the fiftieth anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek. I believe that Gene Roddenberry sold the idea to the network as some sort of space western, but although there was plenty of action, and beautiful alien women, Roddenberry had bigger things in mind.
  Like much of the best science fiction, Roddenberry used alien cultures and far-off time frames to illustrate problems we faced on the good old planet earth. Star Trek played out hatred and bigotry, honor and deceit; democracy and empire; and xenophbia, all safely taking place hundreds of years and thousands of light-years away.
  Also, like some of the best science-fiction writers, Roddenberry had at least one amazing insight. Knowing that all of our history showed that whenever a more technologically advanced culture confronted a less advanced culture, the result (intent) was always conquest and exploitation, Gene Roddenberry gave Starfleet 'The Prime Directive'. A Starfleet  officer could never interfere in any way, even at risk of his own life,  with the natural development of less advanced civilizations. He gave his fictitious heroes a logical extension of what we like to think of as our own exceptionalism: a powerful force for good.
  I would like to think that if advanced alien civilizations exist, that they have somehow worked out their own version of Gene Roddenberry's great idea. Because, quite frankly, if they haven't, and we meet them- we're fucked.

Pull My Finger

  Ted "The immigrant" Cruz took the proverbial mile from Donald Fucking Trump tonight.
  Cruz had the opportunity, tonight, to endorse the nominee. He thought better of it.
  The speech that Cruz gave tonight was the first speech of the man who wants to control the right wing of the Republican party, whether the party goes along, or not.
  Ted Cruz is betting that Donald Fucking Trump will never be president, and that he will be the nominee in 2020. (Campaign slogan for the GOP in 2020: Hindsight.)
  (It is only due to neglect on my part that the last post at Paltering Fools, was the one that predicted what happened tonight, but if I had any readers, I bet they'd be impressed by my continuing perspicacity.)