The words below have been spoken, part of the historical record, and they speak powerfully for their respective viewpoints. So I will leave very few words here myself. I was going back and forth about the order I should put these video clips in, but a bit of reflection was all I needed to understand who and what must be slotted in as the last word.
May the goodness, kindness, compassion, mercy, forgiveness and love associated with the gods of every religion, of the life force and the best of the human heart, prevail in this struggle to lay claim to America’s better angels.
Peace. Shalom. Salām. Shanti. Eiríni. Paix. Paz. Síocháin. Frieden. Fred. Mir. Vrede. Béke. Pokój. Heiwa. Pyeonghwa. Hépíng. Solh. Salamu. Zhi-bde.
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Are you trying to say that Trump lacks any sense of decency? Rhetorical.
Ha!—I’ll answer anyway! Trump’s indecency is so essential to him, so indelibly imprinted and running as a main theme of his life (and of which he is resoundingly unapologetic and even proud), that I’ve never understood how that hasn’t disqualified him in voters’ minds from the get-go. It seems to me that’s where we have to START in assessing candidates of every ideological stripe and position: are they an essentially decent person? Then we build from there. Without it, there’s no building to be done, because an indecent, dishonest, rapacious person that he so clearly is will always disappoint, always sell out, always look out only for himself. It is the most inscrutable question of our age: How could so many people fall for such a transparent, bad-faith conman?
Electing him BOTH times says more about us than him!
I’m afraid that’s true, Gerry; in a republic, we get the representatives we deserve. Though he deserves a lot of “credit” (ahem…) for his unerring grasp of how to get voters to look past or dismiss his indecency in the service of more important things they thought they wanted. And instead of Kelley and Mattis behind him, we get Stephen Miller and Russell Vought, determined not to let this golden opportunity pass them by this time. Heaven help us…
Hi Drew, Hope I am not taking advantage of your blog space. But after rereading “To Build a Fire, Jack London (Thanks to my High School English teacher). It compelled me to write this poem comparing this remarkable short story to todays destructive force that threatens our democracy The Fire and the Flag Kirk Otto Thill Paulsen
He walked alone beneath a sky
Where silence froze the breath of men,
A trail of thought, a spark gone dry,
No heed to warnings spoken then.
The dog beside him knew the way—
Not through maps, but through the bone,
While he, with logic on display,
Believed no force could cast him prone.
The fire he built was bright, but brief,
A flicker in the endless white,
And arrogance, that quiet thief,
Had robbed him of his second light.
So too, a nation built on flame,
Of voices raised and truths declared,
Now finds its hearth not quite the same
Its pillars cracked, its people scared.
A man stood tall, defied the storm,
Dismissed the elders, mocked the law,
He shaped the cold into a form
That fed on grievance, fear, and flaw.
But fire, once sacred, must be fed
With care, with trust, with honest breath,
Or else it dims, and leaves instead
A smoldering path that leads to death.
He’d slit the dog to warm his blood
No thought for life beyond his own.
The dog survives. The man does not.
The flag still flies—but frayed and worn.
And every fire we once forgot
Now asks: will we rebuild, or be reborn?
That may be the only short story I remember from my childhood, Kirk, seared into my memory by London’s masterful imagery and foreboding, and I am going to seek it out for a re-read this, I dunno, 65 years later!
Nice work here, sings along, most all eight-syllable lines. Particularly liked arrogance as a “quiet thief.” And I also appreciate the notion that maybe we’re the dog and dear leader is the man? His reign will end someday, but will we be in position by then to get after that rebuilding?