As We May Fall

I wrote the following last week. As I celebrated a socially-distanced new year due to the current plague, I woke up new year's day without my usual hangover. And, inspired by the fact that the republicans were going to challenge Biden's electoral certification today, and uncertain of the outcome of the Georgia senate races yesterday (which we won), I decided that a letter to the editor was in order. I had just posted the quote from Solzhenitsyn, and it inspired the letter, which was printed in the local paper today, the day we had a failed coup. 

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire said that way back in 1765. 

The truth of that statement has been borne out countless times since then. It is being borne out, in this country, today.Without one fact to back up their specious claims of fraud, Republicans are attempting the overthrow of our election.

President Donald Trump is calling for his followers to gather in Washington as some of his acolytes in Congress question the certification of the electoral votes. News reports have said that some of these politicians know the truth but are acting cynically to please their base and maintain power. 

I can't see into the souls of others, but I wish to appeal to anyone who may be supporting Trump for selfish, craven reasons to listen to the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from his Nobel lecture: "The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme-- only not through me."

  

A Fragment of a Thought

 Democracy is beautiful. Certainly, it is messy and deeply flawed, just as we are. But it is beautiful. Just as we are.

A Quote For The Times

 "The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme-- only not through me."

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Lecture

A Couple of Quotes

The following quotes are both from James Baldwin. Read his work. Read it.

 "The bottom line is this: you write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. In some way, your aspirations and concern for a single man in fact do begin to change the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks or people look at reality, then you can change it." 

New York Times interview, 1979

"Write. Find a way to keep alive and write. There is nothing else to say. If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you are not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real."

Paris Review interview, 1984

These quotes came from an essay in Literary Hub by Emily Temple

 

Finality

 For Faith

 

All but Death, can be Adjusted --

Dynasties repaired --

Systems -- settled in their Sockets --

Citadels -- dissolved --

Wastes of Lives -- resown with Colors

By Succeeding Springs--

Death -- unto itself -- Exception --

Is exempt from Change --

 

Emily Dickinson, poem 749

The Rats Are Sticking Around

 Well, it seems the coprophagous GOP is backing Trump's election fraud scam. The usual suspects have, apparently, decided that it pays to stick to the ass their heads are already shoved into, and hope for the best. And fuck the United States of America.

Quote of the Post

 "The ends justify the means. A nice homily, he thought, which allowed him to do almost anything. It brought to mind the rationale of Ivan Karamazov: without God, everything is permissible."

Robert Silverberg Master of Life and Death novel, 1957