Michelle Obama for President

It was a scary start to the Dem convention last night, with disgruntled Sanders people shouting their anger and booing Hillary's name. I was distraught at the thought of the Democratic Party disintegrating before our eyes, blowing itself apart just when it's needed most.

And then Michelle Obama spoke. One of those thrilling moments when you watch history being made, right in front of you.

I never tweet. But I logged into Twitter as she spoke and wrote, "Michelle Obama for President!" Many were expressing the same sentiment. What a magnificent, wise, compassionate, brilliant woman. What a speech, that lifted the whole squabbling mess into the stratosphere.

Elizabeth Warren did a great job, as did others. And then Bernie Sanders spoke, and my admiration for him quadrupled. He has done the absolutely right thing in wholeheartedly endorsing the candidate who can and must beat Trump.

It's like two different planets - the small bit I saw of the Republican convention, the fearmongering, the darkness of their vision of America and the world, speaking about guns and banning abortions, the virulence of their hatred of Hillary and any kind of government. And then the Dems, speaking about social justice, education, health care, infrastructure, women's right to choose. Not sinking to their level, as Michelle said. Do these red/blue people even live in the same country?

And if I may be disgruntled myself, a word about the Greens, who wanted Sanders to head their party and are apparently courting his angry voters - who are these blind idiots who want to splinter the vote on the left? Remember Ralph Nader - we had the Iraq war thanks to his misguided and selfish ideals. And also, it does piss me off that the Americans go on and on about a woman being nominated, historic, groundbreaking, without a single reference to the many, MANY other countries where women are or have been heads of state. Unless it happens in Amurrica, it doesn't register.

Tonight, more of the same. I'll watch as much as I can stand. Still very hot out there; in here, the fate of the world hangs in the balance. And more loathsome lunatics killing the innocent - a priest, in a French church. Unbearable. It does feel as if some vile anarchic and violent force has been released in the world, unleashing Trump, Marine LePen, Isil, Brexit and more. Is the rough beast upon us, at last?

       THE SECOND COMING
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    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.
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)