Capturing an Audience the Hard Way
This year Major, the groundhog from Kentucky, who had been the guest of honor on Groundhog Day for a decade, died of a heart attack. Having been dropped from the arms of a politician to the floor before his passing, he became the object of conspiracy theories put to rest finally by the announcement that Major had died of natural causes.
This year promises to take us all down the rabbit hole no matter how hard we squeeze our eyes shut and plug our ears with wax. Forgive me for putting the upcoming screenshots on your screen. WARNING: Some individuals may find the following information upsetting. I do. I mourn the death of Major. I don’t blame you if you skip it.
One cool thing about democracy is this: We are rarely captured and forced on pain of corporal punishment to participate as a member of an audience. True, we have truant officers to round up children who skip school, but parents have something to say about that. We are, however, slouching toward Bethlehem, not so much in Joan Didion’s sense of California in the Roaring Sixties, but in the sense W.B. Yeat’s signified in his poem “The Second Coming” after humanity stumbled in the dark into the First World War. Poets have a nose for slow moving news.
From Saturday, 2/24/2024, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference in DC as reported by Newsweek: Why O why is the Grand Old Party led by a candidate who tries to hide what he doesn’t know to begin with? What will be left to resurrect at this rate?
Two utterances from Meduza, the former Russian media outlet which is now working in exile publishing material from inside Russia surreptitiously finding its way out: When a leader kills an opposition leader and feels compelled to stop the dead man from speaking, stealing an election takes on new meaning. Our Spiritus Mundi is grouchy slouching.
