11/13/24

 Wednesday, November 13, 2024

D+8

1964 Pope Paul VI gave up the jewel-encrusted gold papal crown, donating it to the poor 

1969 VP Spiro Agnew accused network TV news departments of bias and distortion

1979 Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for US President in NYC

In bed at 8:45, awake at 3:50, and up by 4:00.  I let Lilly out at 4:15, but I think she never left the stoop.  I let her out again at 5:50 and after much looking around, she moved off the stoop and sidewalk to the south lawn to do her business.  Between 5 and 5;;30, I emptied the full dishwasher and filled it again, cleaned up the kitchen, and listened to Emmylou Harris's At the Ryman, with so many great songs: Guitar Town, Cattle Call, Hard Times Come Again No More.  My eyes teared up a little as I listened to Calling My Children Home.  For some reason, I thought of walking with them to the old Lake Park Pavilion on weekend mornings.  My eyes are wet as I type this.  Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast.

Those lives were mine to love and cherish, To guard and guide along life's way . . .

Back in the years with all together, Around the place we'd romp and play.

So lonely now and oft' times wonder, Oh will they come back home some day.

I'm lonesome for my precious children, They live so far away.

Oh may they hear my calling...calling..and come back home some day.

I don't think of this song so much as a yearning for the singer's adult children to come home, but rather as a nostalgic longing for the days when the children were young and dependent and so much of the singer's life was taken up with caring for them, nurturing them 'to guard and guide along life's way.'  In those days, 'those lives were mine;' now their lives are their own.  She is lonesome for her full-time parenting days when her children needed her in so many ways, ways that filled her life and ended when they 'left the nest.'

Prednisone, day 183, 10 mg., day 4/5.  Prednisone at 5 a.m.  Morning meds around noon. 

Shaking in my boots.  Pete Hegseth will be the Secretary of Defense.  Kristi Noem will be the Secretary of Homeland Security.  Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami will lead the "Department of Government Efficiency."  Almost beyond belief. Right out of Dr. Strangelove and Swift's Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal.  Or should it be The Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire?

Dostoevsky's teaching and Trump's.  The central theme of Dostoevski's novels is that no man is an island and that we are all interdependent.  In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov thinks that he is a wholly independent agent, answerable only to himself.  Thus he was free to kill the old pawnbroker.  His life and his potential were much greater than the pawnbroker's so the good to be accomplished with his use of her money to advance his goals made her murder justifiable.  But the novel is a story of Raskolnikov's suffering for what he did.  He pays a high price for his rejection of 'love thy neighbor.' In The Brothers Karamazov, middle brother Ivan and half-brother Smerdyakov, like Raskolnikov, believe there is no God and everything is lawful.  The youngest brother Alexei, on the other hand, believes in God and in every man's duty to love God and to love his neighbor.  Alexie is the hero of the novel.  He suffers from his love and compassion, but not like his brothers nor like Raskolnikov.  He suffers like Christ suffered and like his teacher, the monk Zossima, suffered.  I'm reminded of the lyrics of Andrew Lloyd Webber's beautiful song, Love Changes Everything.

Love, love changes everything
Days are longer, words mean more
Love, love changes everything
Pain is deeper than before

Love will turn your world around
And that world will last forever
Yes, love, love changes everything
Brings you glory, brings you shame

Nothing in the world will ever be the same

If Raskolnikov is an object lesson and Alexei is a hero, what is Donald Trump?  I think of this in connection with the world our grandchildren are growing up in.  What are they learning from our leaders and our government?  “Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher: For good or evil, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."  My thinking is not entirely clear on the point I'm trying to make, but it seems clear to me that the history of Donald J. Trump is doing much more damage than we know.   His election and his escape from any adverse consequences for his sociopathy, malignancies, crimes, and sins are powerful lessons to our children and grandchildren that narcissism, selfishness, cruelty, and criminality pay, that crime does not pay, that those who let concern for others get in the way of looking out for Number One are fools, losers, and suckers.

Anniversaries thoughts.  Considering the extraordinary wealth and opulence surrounding the pope, doesn't selling the papal tiara seem more than a little like "virtue signaling"?

Was Spiro Agnew the beginning of the "fake news" gambit?

Wasn't Ronald Reagan the beginning of Newt Gingrich, Bush/Cheney, the Tea Party, and Trump?