It's January, that time of year when Scots and wannabe Scots around the world start preparing for Robbie Burns Day, about which more later. But January should be the time for new beginnings, resolutions to live a better way, decisions to look after one's own health and the health of the world and the well-being of one's fellow creatures in this world. It takes a certain kind of courage just to stay informed of atrocities committed in our world. Some people have paid with their lives for standing on the front lines of protest.
In my own attempts at reviving equanimity, I was browsing my stash of poetry quotations and came across one of Tennyson's famous pieces, "Locksley Hall". He wrote it in the 1830s and most of it is the self-indulgent bit of snivelling of an abandoned lover because his cousin had jilted him; however, the part that raises it to noteworthy status besides his unparalled sense of tone ("He had the best ear of any of us" said a contemporary poet) was the prescience of these lines about the future.
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lap't in universal law.
So I triumph'd ere my passion sweeping thro' me left me dry,
Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;
In the 1830s that was written. We can only hope that our presently moribund United Nations regain some authority to preside over a "kindly earth … lap't in universal law".
Regarding the main theme of the sour, jilted lover with that "jauniced eye", I recall what I would call the "dishcloth respose" in my childhood home when Father would stand at the sink reciting passages of "great literature" while drying dishes as mom washed them. When it came to "Locksley Hall", his favourite quotation was Tennyson's petulant verse, "Woman is the lesser man, and all her passions matched with mine/ Are as moonlight unto sunlight, are as water unto wine."
Splat!
Good recital; bad timing, Dad.
And now to our news media? Egad!
Francesca Albanese condemned as a terrorist by the US, severly sanctioned by Secretary of State Marco Rubio (assets frozen, credit cards revoked, entry to UN in New York barred) and even called a "witch" by the Israeli ambassador to the UN. She was doing her job as UN special rapporteur in filing a report on the genocide in Gaza.
The leader of an independent nation kidnapped and taken to be put on trial in the invader's land. 100 Venezuelans (and Cuban volunteer servicemen and women) killed by US special forces during the raid.
A woman murdered by a government agent, then her reputation smeared, contrary to all evidence, by that government as a "domestic terrorist".
Genocides continuing in Palestine and Sudan, financed by military-industrial corporations in the "free world" and a corrupt apartheid government pleading "mere self-defence".
And, embarrassingly for us in Canada, vocal support for these actions by the head of a political party with aspirations for national leadership.
Better voices than mine have written the condemnations of today's democracies-in-failure and noted the parallels with 1930s Europe. For me, the striking aspect of both periods is the slow normalization of cruelty on individual and organizational levels; perhaps not an acceptance, but certainly a societal weariness at hearing so much ugly news. It is as if we develop a thickening of our moral skins to deflect the painful reality of events in our world.
I will close with this reposting of an item. The author has looked deeply into the reasons for an acceptance of unconscionable cruelty by his own nation or a major part of it. Where do we each stand upon reflection?
from Michael Jochum's Facebook post
I’ve been watching an absolutely heroic amount of pearl-clutching lately from people who insist that J.D. Vance would somehow be “worse” than Trump once Trump’s inevitable political and biological expiration arrives.
Let’s get something straight: it has never been about Trump, not for one second.
Trump is just the mascot. The real story is the people who finally saw themselves in him and felt validated by what they saw.
I actually believe most of them will drift away when the cult collapses, like embarrassed fans of a one-hit wonder. Many of them will swear they were never really into him at all. The MAGA amnesia is going to be epic.
I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016 and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic, morally vacant, and psychologically mangled he is.
I don’t wonder anymore.
I think he won for that exact reason.
He wasn’t a candidate. He was a mirror.
If you were a racist, you found your guy.
If you were a misogynist, you found your guy.
If money was your only religion, you found your guy.
If your heart was armored shut, you found your guy.
If you mocked disabled people, you found your guy.
If you hated intelligent people, you found your guy.
If you were a rapist, you found your guy.
If you enjoyed golden showers with Russian sex workers, you found your guy.
If you’d done absolutely nothing to confront your emotional wreckage, you found your guy.
If you were a serial cheater, you found your guy.
If you were a perpetual bankrupt, you found your guy.
If you stiffed honest workers, you found your guy.
If you were a conman, you found your guy.
If you mocked people’s appearances, you found your guy.
If you longed for a toxic Daddy, you found your guy.
If you were dissociated and disembodied, you found your guy.
If you were unconscionable in every economic dealing, you found your guy.
If you lied as naturally as breathing, you found your guy.
If you’d never eaten a green vegetable, you found your guy.
If you were a white supremacist, you found your guy.
If your ego contained a hole so large not even the presidency could fill it, you found your guy.
If you were a sociopath who cared not one molecule about other humans, you found your guy.
If he had only two of these traits, he never would have won. He won because he had hundreds of them, and millions of people recognized themselves in at least one.
This has never been about Trump. It has always been about the people who finally had their worst instincts validated.
Trump didn’t create the cruelty, he licensed it. He handed out permission slips for hate.
He is merely a symptom of a far deeper disease: collective toxicity.
If there is one sentence that explains Trump’s power, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”
That’s the part that should chill the spine.
Who knew that tens of millions of Americans were thinking such unconscionable things about their fellow citizens? Who knew how many white men felt so threatened by women and challenged by minorities that they were ready to torch democracy to feel big again? Who knew that after decades of apparent progress on race and gender, so many people were living in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to legitimize their worst selves and convert their bitterness into political power?
Perhaps we were living in a fool’s paradise.
We aren’t anymore.
– Michael Jochum,
from: Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.
I really will lighten up a bit in future, but … Well, you don't need a "but". Stay informed.