…my feelings right now as expressed in song, prose, and poetry.
Bob Dylan: I threw it all away
For I’, substitute ‘we’:
Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand
And rivers that ran through every day
I must have been mad
I never knew what I had
Until I threw it all away
Procol Harum: Broken Barricades
Now gather up sea shells
And write down brave words
Your prayers are unanswered
Your idols absurd
The seaweed and the cobweb
Have rotted your sword
Your barricades broken
Your enemies Lord
British general Edward Spears, describing his feelings in the aftermath of Munich:
Like most people, I have had my private sorrows, but there is no loss that can compare with the agony of losing one’s country, and that is what some of us felt when England accepted Munich. All we believed in seemed to have lost substance.
The life of each of us has roots without which it must wither; these derive sustenance from the soil of our native land, its thoughts, its way of life, its magnificent history; the lineage of the British race is our inspiration. The past tells us what the future should be. When we threw the Czechs to the Nazi wolves, it seemed to me as if the beacon lit centuries ago, and ever since lighting our way, had suddenly gone out, and I could not see ahead.
Yet it was only two years after Munich that Britain demonstrated its magnificent resistance to Nazi conquest.
From an English or Scottish ballad
I am a little wounded but am not slain
I will lie me down for to bleed a while
Then I’ll rise and fight with you again
Lie down to bleed a while, if you need to–but not for too long–but do not give up. The stakes are way too high.
but there is no loss that can compare with the agony of losing one’s country
I suppose one’s perspective here is dependent on where one is standing. Lots of people felt that they’ve been losing their country since 1965. I understand that others now believe, with Trump, that they are losing their country and that they didn’t see any problem which began in 1965. Trump, for some of us, offers a slim chance of stopping the process, or at least slowing the process, of losing our country.
The ‘Throwing it All Away” is a process that has been going on for a long time.
Neither Clinton nor Trump is much of a supporter of free expression: we know about Hillary’s attempt to cover for her Benghazi debacle by having a filmmaker arrested….and Trump reaction to the Islamist attempt to murder Pam Geller and others by blaming…Pam Geller.
But we would not have leading candidates with this kind of attitude were it not for the fact that support for free speech has weakened greatly among the American public, most especially among college students.
Sigh. Interesting times. I backed Cruz, myself, but I thought that Trump at least had the virtue of demonstrating that there was no downside to speaking out about the problem of illegals, as well as the downside of other lefty shibboleths.
We’re headed for an interesting ride, my friends. No, I don’t care for Trump, but I care even less for the Awful Hillary, and those media and Dem establishment flunkies determined to drag her horrible corpus over the finish line.
The unspeakable in hot pursuit of the uneatable, indeed.
I agree with that. Trump offers a temporary respite, at best. Cruz and Fiorina talked about substantial changes to the structure of the federal government, which explains the opposition within even their own party. The fact that Boehner and McConnell both hate Cruz should tell us a lot about the state of GOP leadership.
Phrase of the week:
‘Rodham and Gomorrah’