STARTING TOMORROW: Passionate intensities!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2023

Information rarely intrudes: This very morning, on Morning Joe, the gang readjusted the focus of what we'd call their passionate intensity.

Over the past few weeks, the focus of their passionate intensity had been the (unexplainable) antisemitism which is allegedly widely found on college campuses—even among presidents of major universities.

Today, the focus shifted back to Donald J. Trump. As for Donald J. Trump himself, his passionate intensity led him to comment, this very weekend, about wiping out "the vermin"—removing them from the land.

Full disclosure:

As Baltimore residents, we've been watching the Baltimore Ravens since the 2001 season. In the past few years, we've often wondered if the nation's various sports pundits have ever watched a Ravens game over the past five years.

So too this morning! We sometimes wonder if the Morning Joe gang have any real idea concerning what's being said, with passionate intensity, over there on the other side.

(On many occasions, our own blue tribe has settled on a dangerous point of pride—we shouldn't listen to what's being said by the Others! Warning: Some of what we saw on this morning's Fox & Friends makes powerful political sense, and even seems to make powerful sense on the merits.)

Full disclosure:

We aren't telling you that Yeats was a political savant. As far as we know, he wasn't.

That said, we thought of one of his famous poems as we watched various factions spout and yell this morning. The lines have been quoted again and again. The famous lines go like this:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
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.

So begins The Second Coming. The leading authority on the famous poem thumbnails it as shown:

"The Second Coming" is a poem that was written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920 and included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming to describe allegorically the atmosphere of post-war Europe. It is considered a major work of modernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence in January 1919, which followed the Easter Rising in April 1916, and before the British government had decided to send in the Black and Tans to Ireland. Yeats used the phrase "the second birth" instead of "the Second Coming" in his first drafts.

[...]

Phrases and lines from the poem are used in many works, in a variety of media, such as literature, motion pictures, television, and music...

In the aftermath of the First World War, Yeats thought the center wouldn't be able to hold, in part because the least constructive people were "full of passionate intensity."

So it almost seems to go in this very day, right here in our own struggling nation. Can "the center" be expected to hold given the current arrangement of our frequently clownish "news" culture?

Consider:

On Fox, viewers are told that Barack Obama has always had "a deep hatred of Israel"—with apologies, that he needs a sign in his yard, a yard sign which says, "Kill the Jews."

That's what red tribe viewers hear on a lazy Sunday morning, with no one on hand to question such remarkable statements. That said, in the past month, the shouting on certain blue tribe programs has tended in the same general direction. As always, the passionate intensities have tended to work like this:

Even on these blue tribe programs, the shouters say they can't imagine why any decent person's views don't perfectly align with their own. The speaker's views are perfectly right. Everyone else is a monster and, of course, a liar, or so we viewers are told.

This morning, Joe moved on from antisemitism and back to Donald J. Trump. We were back to abortion rights and "the Muslim ban," and on to Trump's newly stated intention to go after the vermin.

Do sports pundits ever watch Ravens' games? More and more in recent years, we haven't felt real sure.

So too with the various intensities which now emerge from all sides. We hear a lot of shouting and yelling. On very, very rare occasions, a tiny dribble of relevant information may be allowed to break through.

Donald J. Trump has now explicitly said that he'll take care of "the vermin." Also, it's said, with passionate intensity, that Barack Obama has always had a deep hatred, even that he needs a sign.

The intensities have been full of passion on various red and blue TV shows. Ratings are up, up, up, up, up. Though also, the polls are scary.

That said, can "the center" be expected to hold in the face of such an array of siftings? In the face of these widely performed "ceremonies of innocence?"

Tomorrow: For starters, an extremely passionate Harvard professor very much hates a key word