Fascinating, to watch both all lefties and some righties — those who are faint-hearted and vacillating: their polarized, divergent ways of perceiving what Trump does, always reacting in the moment (something they constantly accuse him of doing: think projection), rather than widening their vision automatically. As for the left, all I saw in MSM headlines for a few days was “Trump CAVES.” I guess that verb must have come from 4 AM talking points? Ann Coulter, on the “right,” denounced Trump as a “wimp.” Oh my.
Meanwhile, I’m sure leftist wapo was thrilled to put out this announcement:
Trump Caves Or Genius: Right Wing Splits After Trump Ends Shutdown with No Wall Funding
While I don’t pretend to even begin to comprehend either strategy or tactics of the Long Game Trump is playing, I sure do sense, on a gut level, that this is what he’s doing. Re: Trump’s “caving” to Pelosi — by first opening up the USG for three weeks, and then deciding not to do the SOTU if it couldn’t be done in the House Chamber, then Pelosi’s somewhat curt invitation a few days later to do the SOTU on February 5th rather than January 29th — Whew! It’s enough to give me whiplash! – let’s go back to just prior to his “caving.” This interpretation:
Trump Playing the Long Game with State of the Union Deferral
And, moving forward . . . oh, but wait a minute, there’s this, written just before Potus “caved.”
Trump Is Building a Wall Inside the Democratic Party — And They Don’t Even Know It
The current political . . . what? battlefield? school yard? compost heap? — reminds me of a facebook thread that I participated in — just couldn’t help myself — where I replied to a bunch of blue-pillers who were admiring Pelosi for her bravery and resolve in “prevailing as Speaker” by bucking Trump:
Okay, NOW let’s get current. Two provocative posts:
So you thought Trump caved? Then you are not paying attention
and
Trump Continues to Prepare the Battlefield
Oh wait a minute, this last post, another referencing Trump’s Long Game, was first published in January 18th, before the most recent political broohaha began!
I admit, I’m in way over my head, here, trying to come up for air in a deep, fast moving river. Maybe it’s just more widening gyre energy? Though frankly, this mix up in my mind reminds me of a purely local whirlpool slowly making its way down the shores of a humongous river channel, showing, by comparison, just how much faster the main current is moving. Or is it? Depends on whether I can widen my view from this —
— to something so vast that the small whirlpool I’m trying not to get lost inside of looks like an infinitesimal dot. I.e., no matter what “news” or “opinions” about “news” we focus on, the river channel is always, and in every way, much wider and much deeper than we realize. And further: as my favorite philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, so memorably put it:
The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself; though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other.
And the bank of that river consists partly of hard rock, subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one, partly of sand, which now in one place now in another gets washed away, or deposited. (On Certainty 95, 97, 99)
To the metaphor of a “widening gyre,” let us now add the metaphor of a “shifting river bed,” if we wish to come close to grokking the ongoing astonishing, cacophonous breakdown/breakthrough of both our way of life and our way of thinking on this beautiful, beleagered planet Earth.
On Certainty. L.W.’s last book, was published posthumously in 1969 from notes written in the 18 months prior to his death in 1951. I imagine his spirit, having been out-of-body for 18 years, once again visiting Earth in 1969: Would he have appreciated the gnomic remarks in his final publication as pretty much “true” for us who are still embodied?
Frankly I imagine that as a spirit he would still appreciate On Certainty, as nearly continuous with what “lies beyond” — given that, in 3D life he had been so powerfully determined to dissolve all his own mental constructs, releasing his soul to the greater beyond.
