When I was seven I chanced upon a blacksnake and a toad. Jaws agape, the large blacksnake slowly worked his way up behind the still and unblinking toad. The toad, as hypnotized as I, never moved, even as it slowly disappeared into the snake, never made the slightest effort to get away. Many years later I again experienced the blacksnake and the toad episode, in the form of the American Left and the unblinking, unresisting population that allowed itself to be ingested into the snake.

Henry Wallace, former Secretary of Agriculture and a not so secret Stalinist in FDR’s employ, ran for president in 1948, his campaign managed Senator George McGovern, who twenty years later would capture the Democratic Party during the turmoil of the Vietnam War and turn the Party violently to the Left. McGovern lost to Nixon, who won 49 states, but Watergate propelled a new class of rabidly left Democrats into the House of Representatives, and the radical left has retained control of the Democratic Party ever since, with predictable results. The Progressive blacksnake has swallowed the toad, and even if we kill the snake, as I did when I was seven, when I came out of my snake-hypnotized state and grabbed him by the tail and smashed him with all my seven year old might against a telephone pole, the toad was still dead.

The serpent in our midst is oft a mirror of ourselves
A neighbor or a colleague, or a friend of many years
But history is useless if just books upon the shelves
As serpents play upon our many fears
The leftist is beguiling with his gleaming scaly skin
His red forked tongue quick darting from his smiling arrowed head
He says he has the answers to the troubles that we’re in
And smiles in knowing all the lies we’re fed
The snake is often charming, often handsome, even fun
His stock in trade convincing you your life is a mistake
That only he can make the oceans rise and rivers run
But lift the curtain and he’s still a snake

There are billions upon billions of giant balls of fire flying through space at fantastic speeds, giant balls of fire that burn for billions and billions of years, so far away they appear to us as distant points of light. Many of these giant balls of fire have smaller bodies circling around them in the mad dash through nearly empty space, and of these smaller rocky bodies many shelter living creatures. And this empty space through which these balls of fire and accompanying planets and satellites are traveling is neither empty nor space, for space does not in fact exist, and neither does time, not in the blinkered, fog-draped sense of our complete misunderstanding. And yet, despite all this, there are still those who do not believe in miracles.

The light of day dims slowly as the slyly stealing dusk
Greets night with loving arms and loving eyes
That hides the guttering fire of the distant near-dead husk
That once held captives spinning in the skies
But now the once bright fire is a giant ball of red
That swallowed all its captives long ago
Its planets and the life they held are gone and all are dead
With nothing left of them to ever show
That life and art and love and music once had graced them all
And creatures who believed that they had made
The world and all within it until chance had made the call
And slowly did their star begin to fade
But was it chance that made the call or was it something old
Far older than they knew that stilled the fire
And though ‘twas running out of time ‘was far from growing cold
And soon would come disaster far more dire
The blast would sunder all around to elemental size
And light the sky a thousand years and more
So bright far distant creatures saw the light and hid their eyes
And knew that fate had that for them in store
And yet did chance or accident have anything to do
With births and deaths of fires freely burned
Or did the fires’ deaths provide star stuff for fires new
And miracles there be for those who’ve yearned
For answers to eternal questions that are ever raised
And looking inward find they do not know
But looking at those points of light upon which eyes have gazed
The answer’s in that tiny, distant glow

If the hive is the cult, whether of personality or idea, the hive will always be with us, for it is the nature of man to dominate his fellow man, to make him conform to the wishes of the dominator. And when threatened, the hive will defend itself with unbounded fury. We see this in the ferocious attack by the Democrat hive on the legitimacy of the Trump election, calling for spurious recounts and blaming their defeat on the evil machinations of the Russians, all in the attempt to damage the incoming president and make it impossible for him to govern. Such is the nature of the Left, and such is the nature of the Leftist hive that believes they and only they have the right to rule. The Democrat hive is going crazy, the first sign of collapse. Radical Leftist Progressivism is dead, and along with it the cult of feminism and political correctness. How long before the collapse is final we do not know, but it cannot be long in coming.

The hive lies hidden, guarded by the servants of the poor
Who dress in lucent garb of glowing light
Defining definitions of the meaning of the store
Of knowledge they’ve acquired overnight
The hive contains all wisdom that the universe has set
In motion to perplex the simple mind
And issues memoranda stating what we must forget
And what we are to seek and what to find
The swarm emerges at a signal from the golden throne
Attacking enemies with savage lust
Not knowing that the Queen is but an ugly, shriveled crone
And soon the hive collapses into dust
And yet another hive arises just beyond the hill
Unhidden and unbidden yet it stands
The hive is always with us, always was and always will
And eager to enwrap us in iron bands

The Left has already launched their inevitable vicious attacks on the Trump victory and presidency even before he takes the oath of office. The Democrats hope to delegitimize the president, but President Trump will very quickly complete the destruction of the current version of the Democratic Party, beginning on Day One.

Yes they thought that they would trifle
With the man and quickly stifle
All defenses and see prisoners in chains
But they quickly were defeated
When our President Trump tweeted
That their little minds he very much disdains
And he laughed and cut the budget
Said no longer would we fudge it
With fake economic numbers looking good
Then he cut the corporate taxes
And to soaring tenor saxes
Double parked the car and looked under the hood
Got all cylinders in motion
And the tide roared like the ocean
As the jobs came back and new jobs filled the screen
As he slashed the regulations
To the joys and fierce elations
Of the workers who saw paychecks rarely seen
What was once a landscape tragic
Filled with jobs as if by magic
Sending miners and the frackers back to work
And the dollar, by such action
Gained in value with the traction
That enriched us all from CEO to clerk
Oh you never saw such wonder
As he tore the sty asunder
Yes the transformation showed us truly blest
His first day in office finished
Energy quite undiminished
AsDay Two began, with eight years till he’d rest

I spoke to a lefty the other day and he said the Narrative was always true, and furthermore he was happy to explain that,

The purpose of the Narrative?
Suspend the disbelief!
All sentences declarative
And told in stark relief
To what is the reality
That faces us today
The bitter, stark totality
Of all that we dismay
The Narrative will lift us up
Feel better toward our lot
And help to pass the dismal cup
That seems, as like as not
To say that things are awful bad
And going on to worse
And so to keep from being sad
A Narrative in verse
Will raise our hearts and bring a song
Onto our thin, dry lips
And after that before too long
We see when fortune dips
That just the opposite occurred
And fortune smiles benign
As we with Narrative concurred
And that’s a darn good sign
It’s better that we just feel good
Regardless of the facts
The Narrative, as understood
Is substitute for acts
That’s why the Narrative’s my choice
And why I always choose
The Narrative to be the voice
I hear and not Fox News

To most, the present is the only time there is. To most, ancient time is the day before their glorious birth, while for those of us with a longer view, the recent past is the 13^th century BC. Deep time predates ancient time, predates the last glaciation, and predates the formation of the present continental configurations. Deep time predates the birth of the solar system and was ancient at the birth of the universe. To most, love and time are two different things, but deep time and love are intertwined. Love does not exist without time. Love is whole and entire, and, like deep time, love is infinite and cannot be divided. Deep time is where your subconscious lives when you are not paying attention.

Time is an illusion, but a rhyme
And time itself is timeless over time
Time’s measurements are made by man and king
And measurements at best a useful thing
Perception is what leads us to believe
That there is time for laughter, time to grieve
But deep inside our souls lie scattered scraps
Of truth that lead us to believe perhaps
That love is all that matters in the end
When family and long departed friend
Are waiting for you, loving arms held wide
To welcome you and gather by your side
Deep time is not a place but to us seems
To be where all our love and all our dreams
Can come together in the sanctum deep
When once again we enter into sleep

I was born in the first year of the Hoover administration, and so have experienced the changes in health care brought about by science, technology and politics. I have a vivid memory of a visit to the doctor in 1935 or 1936. As I write this I can see my very young mother, see the doctor and his office, see his nurse in her starched nurse’s uniform, with the no longer seen white nurse’s emblem of office she wore in her hair. (The brain is a marvelous and at times bizarre instrument; I had not thought of this incident in 80 years, but today, as I write this, is my mother’s birthday, and Dr. Crowley leaped out of the distant and buried past and into mind.) My only other surviving memory of that visit to the doctor is that it cost my mother three dollars, a not insignificant sum in the midst of the Great Depression, so the visit was not a casual one.

It is well to recognize that the visit to Dr. Crowley was before the discovery of penicillin, before antibiotics, before health care insurance, before, actually, the doctor could realistically do much more than to diagnose what was wrong and advise you to lie down and hope it goes away. The other thing to remember is that Doctor Crowley was a sole proprietor of his business, with little to no government interference. He sank or swam as a private practitioner depending on his competence as a doctor and businessman. It seems to me that returning to the days of Dr. Crowley is not entirely possible, but even an approximation would be welcome. The country is different from the country of 1936, and that needs to be kept in mind. Whatever is decided in the future, I hope the government restricts itself to doing the minimum necessary to provide the basic needs of a modern health care system, while allowing technology to flourish, allowing medical schools to admit only those qualified, allowing the pharmaceutical industry to bring new drugs to market in a reasonable time, and to allowing private insurance companies to compete for business nationwide. But the greatest thing government can do is to allow Dr. Crowley to be Dr. Crowley.

The doctor, through the ages
Was an honored, learned man
A confidante of sages
Ever since the time began
But politics intruded
Saying kindness made it fair
That all should be included
The result Obamacare
But now we will replace it
With a simpler, fairer game
So good all will embrace it
And it won’t bear someone’s name
Now the torch is passed to Donald
Fixing health care his first move
And along with sainted Ronald
Dr. Crowley would approve

I spoke to Waltradamus on New Year’s Eve, a few hours before New York dropped the ball again, and he said he didn’t need a crystal ball to predict the events of 2017. Ticking them off on his chubby fingers, he said: Professors will continue to infantilize the snowflakes to the benefit of the Democrats; The pronouns he, him and his will no longer appear in the pages of the New York Times; Science will devise a way for men to become pregnant; Geezer culture will dominate the news and geezers will insist on black and white movies; Presidential news conferences will be by Twitter; and Donald Trump will move out of the White House and back to Trump Tower, with Washington DC returning to the Maryland swamp from which it arose.

I thanked him for his insights
And he smiled and said on most nights
He was oft morose and thought of darkened things
Visions came of great disasters
Millions chained to evil masters
The return of purpled Caesars and the Mings
He then frowned and said, I never
Saw the end of the endeavor
By Obama to destroy the USA
I confess I thought he’d do it
But the Hillary camp blew it
And the Leftist dream just up and went away
On the other hand, he pondered
I believe my mind had wandered
When I thought that clearer minds would then prevail
And the country would see healing
And an era of good feeling
But the Dems seem set on seeing Donald fail
Then he sighed and said, the Geezers
Just might opt to have the Caesars
Rule again and lift the Times’s pronoun ban
Then again, with snowflakes rising
The result may be surprising
And millennials elect a pregnant man
Meanwhile Donald will use Twitter
As a designated hitter
To hit long balls high and hard over the fence
Showing all who has the power
As he moves back to Trump Tower
Leaving swampland in the hands of VP Pence

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

A recent article in Popular Mechanics states that “Scientists Catch Virtual Particles Hopping In and Out of Existence. The quantum effect known as vacuum birefringence was predicted in the 1930s, but this is the first observational evidence of the phenomenon in action. Quantum electrodynamics (QED) describes the relationships between particles of light, or photons, and electrically charged particles such as electrons and protons. The theories of QED suggest that the universe is full of ‘virtual particles’, which are not really particles at all. They are fluctuations in quantum fields that have most of the same properties as particles, except they appear and vanish all the time. Scientists predicted the existence of virtual particles some 80 years ago, but we have never had experimental evidence of this process until now.” All of which raises the question, is quantum physics actually magic, or physics? ISIS is now executing people for witchcraft, so maybe they know something. Or maybe we just don’t understand what it is we are seeing.

So now we have some particles
Appearing in some articles
That seem to vanish then to reappear
Those chopped off heads are tragic
But to ISIS guys real magic
Is the quantum world we really have to fear
If existence is uncertain
We’ll be bringing down the curtain
On the rational and scientific world
Take us back to Zeus, Apollo
And the world will gladly follow
Fearing Thor and ducking thunderbolts he’s hurled

A study by the Comparative Ethology Research Group in Budapest, Hungary, reveals that dogs remember what you do. Luckily, they cannot tell anybody. I spoke about this to Roger, my faithful Lab, and he said,

I never would reveal a thing that happened here last night
My lips are sealed about the weekend too
Although I must admit, my friend, it really was a sight
And as your buddy I say good for you
Yes she was hot and while I stayed outside in bitter cold
And shivered wishing I was warm inside
You know my love for you will mean the tale remains untold
Although it tore my heart out when you cried
I understand she left quite late despite your desperate pleas
I saw her leave the house and drive away
But dogs have senses that astonish, sure as we have fleas
And I could see that nothing you could say
Would make her stay another sec when once she stood to leave
Despite the crackling fire and the wine
And I won’t tell about the flower vase I saw you heave
And overturn the table set to dine
I told him he was wrong about what he had seen and heard
I said she simply stopped to say goodbye
She’d been promoted and was flying like a gorgeous bird
To Malibu where limits reach the sky
I said I envied her and wished her luck and wished her well
At which he cocked his head and smiled a smile
He wagged his tail and sadly said, I swear I’ll never tell
But I was by the door for quite a while
And overheard some things that made my short hair stand on end
And when she left you screamed and howled all night
You staggered to the door so drunk you could not even bend
And let me in so I could set things right
A crying drunk you were my friend, whom I shall never blame
The bottle going down and not by sips
With tear red eyes you held me close and called me by her name
Sobbed I love you and kissed me on the lips