War and Culture

It’s World Series Time. The Yankees are playing the Diamondbacks, and the festivities are grand. Tuesday evening in the Bronx, the President was on hand to throw out the first ball, an unprecedented convergence of the greatest moment in sports and the world’s pre-eminent elective office. Mr. Bush, former Managing Partner of the Texas Rangers looked snappy in his windbreaker and it’s nice to have a President who’s comfortable on a ball field. He toed the rubber in fine fashion and threw a strike, a nifty circle change. After a strenuous, off key anthem, a bald eagle swooped in from center field to its handler on the mound. This beautiful touch and the magnificent creature were featured in every game in NYC this post-season. Heaven-shaking chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A” erupted. Even if the Yankees don’t win this year, they play and plan like Champions, the way Americans are meant to do.

Nevertheless, given the living context of the moment, the deceits and cultural decline to which our dominant institutions are committed, or into which they are locked, the swooping predator put me in mind of the haunting opening verses of W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming:”

Turning and turning in a widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer. / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned… (more…)