5 January 2020 — 0935 mst

A rough beast occupies the White House — has
his middle east blunder unleashed the dogs of war?

Probably not the dogs of World War III, and, one hopes, not the dogs of full scale war with Iran. But President Trump’s reckless assassination of a replaceable Iranian general will result in the deaths of members of our armed services. Whether the assassination was legal is of secondary importance to the fact it was a mistake.

Behind the headlines, the dread of Yeats throbs in flaming letters.

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.

Meanwhile, our Commander Impeached slouches toward a constitution nullification acquittal in the U.S. Senate.

The Second Coming may, as The Paris Review blog maintains, “…be the most thoroughly pillaged piece of literature in English.” It may also, as Ashley Phillips Taylor, Jay Parini, and others, have written, the poem most on point for a presidency defined by Biblical levels of ineptitude and evil.