When I feel slightly depressed about the State of Things (right now***) or even overwhelmingly so (not now), I want to run to the hills with some poetry.
Here you go.
A Day! Help! Help! Another Day! Your prayers, oh Passer by! From such a common ball as this Might date a Victory! From marshallings as simple The flags of nations swang. Steady -- my soul: What issues Upon thine arrow hang!
c. 1858 Emily Dickinson
*** John Boehner. Really? I'm grateful to be living in California, though.
Remember that expression? I don't even remember who used it, but I'm leaning on it, today, Friday, the last day of the week before Election Day and the probable transfer of power from Democrats to Republicans in Congress. I read this interesting piece on Salon today and watched the video. Basically, it draws parallels between the Obama and Reagan presidencies, and the drubbing Reagan got in his first mid-term, due to a dismal economy.
What's interesting to me, though, is how nothing ever really changes in politics, and if there's any proof of the concept of maya, or illusion, well, politics is it.
Given the obscene amount of money spent on these elections (with California's gubernatorial race among, if not the, worst of them), I have near-religiously avoided watching any commercials or entered any debates about what's coming. I've read some ridiculously strident conservative blogs and refrained from commenting, and when anything about the Tea Party comes up, I listen politely and then go mainline some heroin. I still have confidence in President Obama, and despite feeling some disappointment and anger at the concessions he's made, I believe fervently that he is one of the few true intellectuals that we've ever had leading our country, in the line of Jackson, Lincoln, Jefferson, Adams and Wilson. And maybe it's just me, but I do feel more comfortable with someone espousing the intellect leading this great and complicated country of ours.
But given what's probably going to happen next week, I'm taking heart in history, in what is, perhaps, my philosophy of life --
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity!
What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north; and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, and ear filled with hearing. What has been, is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. ( Ecclesiastes 1:3-9 )
UPDATE: "IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID" from Wikipedia:
"It's the economy, stupid" was a phrase in American politics widely used during Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign against George H. W. Bush. For a time, Bush was considered unbeatable because of foreign policy developments such as the end of the Cold War and the Persian Gulf War. The phrase, made popular by Clinton campaign strategist James Carville, refers to the notion that Clinton was a better choice because Bush had not adequately addressed the economy, which had recently undergone a recession.
Although the sign was intended for an internal audience of campaign workers, the phrase became something of a slogan for the Clinton election campaign. Clinton's campaign used therecession to successfully unseat George H.W. Bush. In March 1991, days after the ground invasion of Iraq, 90% of polled Americans approved of President Bush's job performance.[2]Later the next year, Americans' opinions had turned sharply; 64% of polled Americans disapproved of Bush's job performance in August 1992.[2]
