Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Things Fall Apart

From Jim Kuntsler's blog yesterday. He was talking about the previous great convulsion in American history, the one before the cataclysm he sees coming sure as we're born. He is, I fear, correct about what's happened to Obama. The man has proven totally inept. I've gotten so I don't even like to hear him talk anymore because he's got nothing to say to me.
In this previous historic convulsion the issue was slavery; today the issue is the rule of law - the absence of which from banking is destroying the USA as effectively as a foreign invasion. Poor President Obama looks more like Millard Fillmore reincarnated every day, an empty figurehead servling of less-than-benevolent interests hiding in plain sight. What will become of this Republic when he puts his Santa suit away for the year, nobody knows (and many people dread).
(Actually, I think James Buchanan, as a pitifully ineffective president might have been a better example than Fillmore. Things actually fell apart during Buchanan's administration; Fillmore presided over the immediate post-Compromise of 1850 years, when the country was still 9-10 years from falling apart. I don't think the US has that much time.)

How I do so fervently wish that Kuntsler was wrong and that I'm wrong about what we believe is coming for this country. But I cannot get W. B. Yeats' words out of my head:

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

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