Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Somber Tuesday before the Inauguration.

Comrade Trump's latest outrage is to insult John Lewis, a Congressman from Georgia (the American state, not the former Soviet republic.)

I am not one who embraces heroes. I've always held to something I read years ago in Mark Harris' classic novel "Bang the Drum Slowly." That is a line spoken by Red Traphagen, Harris' brilliant Moe Berg-esque catcher and the Mammoth's resident philosopher: "The only hero is a man without heroes."

Even so, if you insist on having heroes--or if you cotton to people who have lived their lives heroically--you'd be hard-pressed to find a better, stronger, more noble man than John Lewis.

Lewis' head was the target of billy clubs and pistol butts from one-hundred-and-one anti-Christian racists. He's spilled more blood for our country and the alleged principles our nation was allegedly founded upon than a thousand Trumps.

To insult Lewis is to insult conviction, honesty, fair-play, belief, and America itself.

We live in a strange and confusing world. In our industry we seem to lust after concocted awards given to imaginary work. 

We seem to occupy an Empire of Illusion, where nothing is real and we want to believe that bromides and platitudes will feed the hungry, bring peace to the world and reverse the tide of rising seas.

I know. 

This is depressing for a Tuesday morning. 

But on this coming Friday, we will inaugurate an empty-headed psychopath to occupy the highest office in the land, a man who believes only in himself, an ill-informed, immoral and probably illegal bully.

His bashing of John Lewis, the bloody-headed son of sharecroppers and a 30-year Congressman is only the latest of Clockwork Orange's latest assaults.

And we, it seems are going gentle into America's good night.

Leaving the reality-based world with a whimper.
--
Seven frighteningly relevant minutes.
http://www.jbs.org/video


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