WILL SURVIVING TRUMP BUILD UP ANTIFASCISM ANTIBODIES
The cart in front of the horse, but it’s my buggy
I wished to write an uplifting verse as the events of the week within the US Justice system has brought me much hope. I’m undoubtedly not alone in my sensibilities in this matter. I wrote as uplifting as I could muster, but often the future challenges could not be dismissed, bringing out some taste of pessimism. Below one will find information on the positives which happened from the American Civil War, The New Deal, and Truman’s proclamation of winning the war in Europe in 1945. I will find quotes on the word ‘progress,’ as this seems to be appropriate to the discussion.
First the verse:
What good came from the American Civil War:
Some words on what the New Deal brought to the country. Only to be ignored in time I might add.
Harry Truman’s proclamation of the ending of the European theater of World War II. Please try to find the relevance in these words.
I thought of the word ‘progress’ as a subject to consider in this discussion. Hence from Day’s Collacon (1884) are a few quotes with general information found on Wikipedia. There is a variety of thought found in these quotes, I found each as having merit despite the particular author of the quote.
“Progress is the child of doubt.”
— Carneades.
Carneades (214/3–129/8 BC) was a Greek philosopher and perhaps the most prominent head of the Skeptical Academy in ancient Greece. He was born in Cyrene. By the year 159 BC, he had begun to attack many previous dogmatic doctrines, especially Stoicism and even the Epicureans whom previous skeptics had spared. As scholarch (leader) of the Academy, he was one of three philosophers sent to Rome in 155 BC where his lectures on the uncertainty of justice caused consternation among leading politicians. He left no writings. Many of his opinions are known only via his successor Clitomachus. He seems to have doubted the ability not just of the senses but of reason too in acquiring truth. His skepticism was, however, moderated by the belief that we can, nevertheless, ascertain probabilities (not in the sense of statistical probability, but in the sense of persuasiveness) of truth, to enable us to act.
“Step by step progress is made.”
— Commodus.
Commodus (Lucius Aurelius Commodus Antoninus, 31 August 161 – 31 December 192) was Roman emperor from 177 to 192. He was co-emperor with his father Marcus Aurelius from 177 until his father's death in 180. From 180 to his death in 192, Commodus was the only emperor. The reign of Marcus Aurelius had been marked by almost continuous warfare, even though he preferred books to war. That of Commodus was comparatively peaceful in the military sense but was marked by political strife, and the arbitrary and capricious behaviour of the emperor himself. In the view of Dio Cassius, a contemporary observer, his accession marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron". The historian Edward Gibbon took Commodus's reign as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire.
“Progression is nature's *ordinance.”
— O. S. Fowler.
Orson Squire Fowler (October 11, 1809 – August 18, 1887) was an American phrenologist and lecturer. He also popularized the octagon house in the middle of the nineteenth century. Fowler wrote that coarse hair correlated with coarse fibers in the brain, and indicated coarse feelings; that, he wrote, suggested that people of African descent had poor verbal skills and traits that were best suited for nursing children or waiting on tables. At the same time, the phrenological journal edited by Fowler and his brother expressed strong abolitionist sentiments, calling slavery a "a monstrous evil." Fowler's writings were also anti-Semitic. For instance, in "Hereditary Descent" (1843), Fowler wrote that Jewish people were hereditarily acquisitive, deceitful, and destructive (phrenology believes that none of these "organs" are negative as such, but all can be used for good).
*2: something ordained or decreed by fate or a deity. My interpretation of the definition of the word ordinance.
NOTE: I apologize for quoting an apparent racist and anti-Semite above. I do agree with the overall quote in the progression of nature, hence I included it with this caveat.
“The law of man's bodily progress is also the law of his mental progress; both must be gradual. No grand idea can be realized except by successive steps and stages, which the mind must use as landing places in its ascent.”
— E. M. Goulburn.
Edward Meyrick Goulburn (11 February 1818 – 2 or 3 May 1897) was an English churchman. In 1858 he became a prebendary of St Paul's, and in 1859 vicar of St John's, Paddington. In 1866 he was made Dean of Norwich, and in that office exercised a long and marked influence on church life. A strong Conservative and a churchman of traditional orthodoxy, he was a keen antagonist of higher criticism and of all forms of rationalism.
“We can trace back our existence almost to a point. Former time presents us with trains of thoughts gradually diminishing to nothing; but our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding; our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection of being.”
— Sir H. Davy
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, FRS, MRIA, FGS (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as for discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Davy also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. Davy is also credited to have been the first to discover clathrate hydrates in his lab. As a poet, over one hundred and sixty manuscript poems were written by Davy, the majority of which are found in his personal notebooks. Most of his written poems were not published, and he chose instead to share a few of them with his friends. Eight of his known poems were published. His poems reflected his views on both his career and also his perception of certain aspects of human life. He wrote on human endeavours and aspects of life like death, metaphysics, geology, natural theology and chemistry.
I end with Einstein, and one of his quotes on the future which fits the bill.
“I feel that you are justified in looking into the future with true assurance, because you have a mode of living in which we find the joy of life and the joy of work harmoniously combined. Added to this is the spirit of ambition which pervades your very being, and seems to make the day's work like a happy child at play.”
— Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely held to be one of the greatest and most influential scientists of all time. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, he also made important contributions to quantum mechanics, and was thus a central figure in the revolutionary reshaping of the scientific understanding of nature that modern physics accomplished in the first decades of the twentieth century. His intellectual achievements and originality resulted in "Einstein" becoming synonymous with "genius". Einsteinium, one of the synthetic elements in the periodic table, was named in his honor. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, Einstein was ranked the greatest physicist of all time.
My hopes are much higher in a better tomorrow than after 2016 and then after January 6, 2021 when we all witnessed the before unimaginable. I, like many others, including some siblings expected something to happen in those last weeks Trump was in office. And when the self correction seemed not to be happening, and we observed how Brazil reacted after their similar insurrection, a loss of heart was to be expected. I could only see backsliding as a nation in those times. The slow gears of justice moved too slow for perception. And in the end as a friend and one time attorney said “the mill of justice moves slowly, but it grinds very fine.” So I wrote this earlier today before hearing the details of Trump’s arraignment, and that the man is apparently honing his skills in the process, and is more comfortable than in his first appearance in New York court. But through it all, I wished to see the light ahead, and a country not so debilitated with mental cases put in power, and with some reason to prevail in the workings of the country. As a baby boomer, I wish as a group we had more to show than we do in advancement of the country. My parents were among that greatest generation, and some redemption is perhaps needed. So are my thoughts about this day and the America of our future.
65th posting, August 3, 2023