Friends, all over the world people rang in the New Year, and we here at WaddyIsRight were no exception. 2020 seems like a mystical, magical fairyland in some ways -- who can believe we're a fifth of the way through the 21st century??? Where did the time go? And the futuristic wonders that await us in the upcoming decade, well, the mind simply boggles... In addition, 2020 will be, or ought to be, the true beginning of the Age of Trump, because, once he wins reelection, people will understand that 2016 wasn't a fluke, and Trumpism is here to stay. We can only hope!
May you and yours enjoy a splendid 2020, a magnificent decade throughout the 2020s, and, heck, why don't you just go ahead and have a spiffy 21st century while you're at it! It's all positive thoughts from now on, right? Okay, we won't push it! 😉
Dr. Waddy: OK I'll try again; this machine is having one of its days. Its been 60 years since 1960 (how strange that sounded then, all I had known was '50's)which the first year I got interested in politics. Subtract 60 from 1960 and McKinley, a Civil War vet, is President; TR has yet to be in line for the Presidency;Franz Joseph yet reigns in Austria Hungary and Victoria (a granddaughter of GeorgeIII) continues her glorious tenure.
ReplyDeleteThis may be the year of our country's redemption from its 50 year far left curse. Fasten your seatbelts!
You put it in sharp perspective, Jack -- time moves so quickly. We are but dust motes floating in God's rec room. Enjoy the ride while you can, people!
ReplyDelete"Spiffy"--you are just on a roll with those "pithy" words. smiles
ReplyDeleteI can attest to those years passing by...I wonder where almost 53 years have gone. Agree, "We are but dust motes floating in God's rec room."
Linda -- it's scary how quickly time passes! It's scary too how rapidly the values and assumptions jealously guarded and maintained by civilized peoples over centuries and millennia can dissolve before our very eyes. Civilization, though, is as mortal as you and me. To everything there is a beginning...and an end as well.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy and Linda: Well though, I wonder. Most of the history of Western civilization (as an amateur only I maintain) was gradual and precipitate changes like Cromwell's Commonwealth or the Paris Commune were quickly rejected. Then came the 20th century but even then, those of us who survived it saw the defeat of terribly wrongminded efforts at immediate and complete reform of society, culture, economy and polity.Examples are as obvious as to make reference unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteWhat are we to make of this experience? Has modern technology made it inevitable? Or have historically and painfully proven verities reasserted themselves, as may have been manifested in Britain, as may be dawning in a possible decisive rejection of the left this year in America?
Jack, as you know I'm skeptical, but I'm willing (and eager) to be won over to your brand of optimism.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if our technological progress makes detachment from traditional morality inevitable, because it infuses mankind with an arrogance and complacency heretofore hard to justify.
At the end of the day I still believe in LEADERSHIP, and thus men like Trump can, in my view, make a difference, sometimes even a decisive one.
Dr. Waddy: Marlowe foresaw, in Doctor Faustus (though the Faust story was not his alone), a presumptuous rejection of established truths and graphically portrayed what he believed to be its infernal consequences. That play was probably allegory or can be plausibly seen as such today. But Marlowe might well have pointed to the 20th century as vindication of his warning NOT to dismiss verities such as Divine judgement.
ReplyDeleteThe technological advances of his day and their suggestion to humanists that man was in complete control of his destiny, might well have prompted his caution. Imagine if he could have seen the 1930's.
Let us ,therefore, embrace those blessings that scientific advance has brought us but let us not view them as release from Divinely mandated moral responsibility. History has proven the murderous consequences of such presumption.
Hear hear, Jack! As we learn more about the universe, the first and most important lesson is always this: what we don't know vastly exceeds what we do. Humility is still the order of the day.
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