Murray Tacoma

So, I once saw a slide like this one while watching Johnny Carson, and I thought if I ever wrote a story about a talk-show host on the run, he would use Murray Tacoma as an alias... y'know, because if you pronounce "More To Come" kinda funny, it sort of sounds like... ah, never mind.

I never wrote that story anyway, and it's not the only thing that has gone unwritten, especially lately.  O tempora! O mores! indeed, and I'm not sure which has a greater inhibiting effect, the tempora or the mores.

Eight posts and ten months ago, I talked about how hard it was to write these little posts with the very real threat of an authoritarian kleptocracy in the nation's capital. We've had precious few victories in the first eleven months of 45's term, and setback after setback to human rights, economic equity, scientific inquiry, rule of law, and productive politics.  It seems like we all should just be blogging about the current state of affairs, all the time, but I am not sure it is in me to do that, partially because I am not sure anyone cares. A rather sorry state of affairs.

And I wonder whether blogging per se is the way to communicate anything I want to say. The numbers on my consolidated blogs are minuscule; I could probably get as many readers by printing a 'zine and leaving it on laundromat benches. But I am loathe to abandon the relative independence of the blog for a corporatized commons. And in that indecision lies paralysis.

But there's a new year coming, and a chance for renewal and rebirth, or at least rejuvenation. Let's see how that turns out, shall we.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this: Martin Luther King is often quoted as having said "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." It's really hard to see that curvature right now, and it is indeed dispiriting to see what appears to be a trends in the opposite directions. But Dr. King was paraphrasing Transcendentalist Theodore Parker, and the original quotations goes like this:

 "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."

So maybe we just have to hang in there, and move along the curve until our sight catches up with its arc.

Let's hope so.