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.
That Billy Yeats sure could write some purty poems.
The verse above is the first half of William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” in which he suggests that the long-awaited Second Coming wouldn’t be Jesus Christ but instead would be some bizarre beast.
With just two days remaining before the 2024 presidential election, I am feeling much more fatalistic than I was a week ago. I still believe that the America in which I grew up would never elect a man like Donald Trump as its president, but I no longer believe this is the America in which I grew up.
For one thing, both parties have moved far enough from the center that people who are true moderates no longer have a political home. It used to be that our two parties were each about 10 degrees off center in opposite directions. In fact, as Richard Nixon said in one of the 1960 debates, Republicans and Democrats basically wanted the same things for America. Degree and timing were the only real differences.
Not anymore.
Both Nixon and John F. Kennedy, Republicans and Democrats, believe America had a role in the world to stand for freedom and against tyranny.
Modern Republicans don’t. They have basically become the party of America First, the isolationist philosophy that worked overtime to keep the U.S. from getting into World War II against Adolf Hitler.
Trump has made it very clear he sees no value in U.S. membership in NATO or in protecting Europe from Russian expansion. In fact, his only support for other countries comes down to how we can profit from them.
In fact, Trump sees very little value in government doing anything to help those who are less fortunate or ending discrimination against those who are different.
Of course, there are also the tax cuts for the rich.Modern Democrats seem to have lost their way as well, getting away from their historic mandate of standing up for working men and women against the rich.
These days it seems as if social issues have become what matter most, with Democrats almost obsessed with things that matter to smaller numbers of people. No, not abortion rights. That’s a freedom issue that affects more people than even realize it.
I’m speaking more of the issues on the fringe, like gay rights and transgender rights. There’s nothing wrong with being for them, but they shouldn’t be how Democrats define themselves.
What we get is demagogues like Trump lying about the issue and saying parents are sending their sons to school and having them come home as daughters. Whether they wanted to change or not.
Will Trump win? I’d guess it is probably 50-50, although I truly believe a Trump victory would be the result either of fraud/interference or of there being far more gypsys, tramps and thieves voting than I think.
Let’s just hope our own rough beast can be stopped on its way to Bethlehem.
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?