When questioned about his reputation in a CBS interview, AG William Barr replied “Everyone dies”. This pithy phrase epitomizes the men in the circle of trump and the clan of the GOP — the hollow men, the men without reputations, the men without any purpose beyond serving their earthly masters, the men with no faith in humanity, the men without souls.
How liberating it must feel to have no conscience and be guilt-free about the death and destruction you cause. How utterly empty it must feel when you wait for death, wait for it to wash away your sins, wait for it to free you of your past and your future. How hollow it must feel to pretend that the world ends when your eyes go shut. How utterly devastating and perhaps liberating it must feel to admit so to the world, accompanied by some nervous laughter, knowing that there is no hope for salvation. How utterly inhuman to be dead before you die.
Everyone dies and I am not, you know, I don't believe in the Homeric idea that you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?
How much darkness must one harbor against humanity when you realize that there will no odes, only scorn, long after you are gone?
Perhaps, James Comey was on to something when he famously wrote at www.nytimes.com/… - “Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.”
And these wretched men have stolen the keys to the nation and have no pangs about driving it over the cliff. Because they have no reputations to protect, no future, no souls.
Let’s take the keys back. Our country deserves better. The world deserves better. Our values are different, America is different, our future is different.
As Walt Whitman the American poet and humanist (whose 200th birthday we celebrate today), wrote so eloquently -
This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
P.S. Mark Sumner has more details about the wretched Barr interview at CBS — www.dailykos.com/...