Fenced in, or out?

As this is being typed, we have a boule of artisan sourdough kerns bread beginning to bake. Soon the house will begin to smell wonderful. Later we'll have fresh bread to go with reheated homemade minestrone, compliments of the Better Half. Tomorrow and Friday we may, or may not, get 3 or 5 or 9 inches of snow. It would have been helpful if Mother Nature had delayed the storm until Friday, Saturday and Sunday, to dampen protests at our state capitol.

Has anyone really discovered what Trump supporters really want, other than being able to do whatever the hell they want and not face any consequences? Here's one example of what the Trump supporters in an author's family favor: Praise the Lord and pass the pipe bomb. Reading the article left me with the impression that the US is drifting dangerously close to its own version of sharia. We're old enough to remember the concerns expressed when Jack Kennedy ran for president, that he'd listen to the pope instead of following the Constitution. The more things change, the more they remain the same, sort of?

Other reports suggest that Trump voters feel marginalized, or those feeling marginalized tend to vote for Trump:

Populist messages, like “take back control” or “make America great again,” find a receptive audience among people who feel pushed to the sidelines of their national community and deprived of the respect accorded full members of it.

Part of the family heritage with which we most strongly identify stems from the side that felt most of the effects of the old "No Irish need apply" bias. We know of many groups that have been looked down on and, in turn, have looked down on others. For the most part, it rarely came to attempts to overthrow a government, although, again, the American Colonies and, later, Ireland rebelled. We are treading dangerous waters these days.

fenced in, or out

Photo by J. Harrington

Robert Frost has written a wonderful poem we've shared below. To paraphrase that poem a little, something there is that doesn't love a yoke, whether the yoke be made of culture, economics, or other forms of potential oppression. We're coming to the view that global corporate capitalism is playing for fools politicians and the 99% of us not in the most elite 1% class. There should be no such thing as "too big to fail." Giantism is characterized by excessive growth. If 99% of us all supported more equity and diversity, and less oppression in our politics, we'd be successful. Walls make poor tables for sharing.

Mending Wall

By Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

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