Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

That segment from William Butler Yeats‘ poem The Second Coming, always had relevance as a summation of the chaos and calamity contained in life-at-large. Life is a series of peaks and valleys, right? When was ever it not the case according to the history books? Even the dinosaurs peaked and then went into a terminal valley thanks to a meteor strike about 67 million years ago. Humankind has yet to be wiped out by that random rock rocketing toward earth. The odds of that happening are pretty long, but there are other forces that are loosening anarchy.

Ya think?

Second coming? If one wants to credit a religious comeuppance to that expression, well okay. After all, religion is responsible for enough bloodshed to possibly form its own ocean. And all religions have made contributions to that righteous reservoir. However, one need not confine attribution of “second coming” to supernatural spiritual beliefs alone. Another type of “religion” exists in the realm of politics. Politics is friction, folks. Friction: the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another.

Politics is currently causing plenty of chaos and anarchy. Political parties are actually not much different than religious organizations. Either can get you roughed up or ultimately laying lifeless on a gurney with an I.D. tag on the big toe. Right now in the U.S., there’s a faction of a political party that has, in recent years, literally unloosed anarchy. Rest assured it’s not the Green Party. It’s the Red Party (with an elephant mascot; an insult to the elephant species). It’s hardcore true believers often use religion as a wedge, seeking power the same as one set of spiritual beliefs does over another. It’s essentially a cult (the same as every organized religion).

The most fervent of this Red cult’s members have blood on their hands. It’s “leader” holds a disturbing sway over them. In fact, this person holds sway over even those whose job it is to hold such bloody behavior to full account. No, I do not allude to another political party, though the cult’s main opposition is a political party, but one that pathetically is much better at rhetorical retorts than serious and substantive pushback. No, the reason this Red Cult still exists in a most toxic context is because it apparently is good for ratings. Local and national (dare I say even international?) news agencies treat the Red Cult as ratings red meat.

The proof of such a cynical approach to so-called journalism was literally admitted to when the head of a major national media outlet said as much back in 2015, when the aforementioned “leader” of the current cult first spewed his ugly ideology of divisiveness, hate, and sociopathic poison: “He may not be good for the country, but he sure is good for ratings.” And eight years later, in spite of a legal system that has finally decided to show some backbone by charging him with a plethora of crimes sitting on a mountain of smoking-gun evidence, the media allows him to dominate headlines with reporting that still is fawning over him. Sure, innocent until proven guilty, but this is ridiculous. The average person has near-zero chance of beating parking ticket!

Talk about things falling apart and a center that cannot hold! Science-trained meteorologists see the climate dramatically collapsing before our very eyes, but for some reason do not acknowledge its clear cause and effects. Likewise, mainstream news media refuse to pronounce the absurdity that is the Red Cult leader still being assessed as a legitimate candidate for the presidency in spite of his having attempted to overthrow the very government that the presidency is beholden to. Not very funny, but those ratings…

Another part of Yeats’ The Second Coming offers this:

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.