by Jonathan Reisman

More than a century ago, William Butler Yeats penned this first stanza of 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.

As 2024 commences, Yeats’ poetry resonates with me, both personally and politically. Institutions and norms are crumbling and disintegrating in America from both external attacks and internal decadent rot. Those norms- the rule of law, equal protection, equal justice, due process, meritocracy, freedom of speech, and the government and private institutions that adhere to and protect them - are the infrastructure supporting our society. Their dissolution and destruction portends civil war. Things are falling apart, and the center is imploding. 

The left’s McCarthyesque and partisan weaponization of the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the surveillance state has violated the rule of law, equal justice, and due process and precipitated a deserved, if disastrous, loss of trust and confidence in our system. The stealth replacement of equality and equal justice under the law with equity and social justice under the lawless as societal norms and goals is largely to blame. This is especially true because the left has been unwilling to define exactly what equity and social justice mean, which makes assessing them impossible. Here in Maine, the climate alarmist Governor and her state agency vassals: the insurrection-promoting Speaker of the House (storm the Capitol!), the sexually-harass-the-help Attorney General, the Trump-banning and Black-Lives-Matter-propagandizing (Hands up, Don’t Shoot!) Secretary of State, the University of Maine System, and the legacy corporate media, led by the Pravdas on the Presumpscot and Penobscot, endlessly prattle on about equity and social justice, but a clear definition and corresponding metric is nowhere to be found. There is plenty of passionate intensity from the left’s assorted social justice warriors and anti-racist grifters and propagandists, and little if any determined, purposeful, and effective pushback from the right. 

I have offered the following definitions of equity and social justice:

Equity- Equal outcomes;

Social Justice- Redistribution of income, wealth, and power from “oppressor” groups to “oppressed” groups. Oppressor groups are overrepresented, and oppressed groups are underrepresented. Oppressor groups include heterosexual white males, Jews, most Asians except Muslims, and colonists. Oppressed groups include BIPOC, LGBTQ+, Palestinians, and Muslims.

I am sure that my definitions are not acceptable to the left, but they have been unwilling to debate them or offer their own. The presumed Democratic Presidential ticket of senile Joe and word salad spewing, cackling Kamala are clearly unwilling and likely incapable of offering an alternative definition or engaging in thoughtful debate. Possible Democratic alternatives, slick hair Gavin Newsom and Netflix mogul Michelle Obama, are no better. On the Republican side, Donald Trump talks a good game, but I prefer Ron DeSantis. At least they appear to have conviction, although Trump showed disastrously poor judgment when he empowered Fauci and failed to promptly call off his righteously aggrieved supporters on January 6th. Robert Kennedy and Cornel West are right on a few things and passionately wrong on many others. Joe Manchin is looking for a center that has already disintegrated and, in any case, is responsible for the disastrous Inflation Reduction Act more properly known as the Green New Deal.

The personal relevance of Yeats’ words comes from the loss of my wife of 44 years as 2023 ended. Entropy rules and things do indeed fall apart.  My New Year’s resolution is to make no major decisions for at least 6 months, but the Presidential primaries, legislative session, and clear and present dangers to the Republic will make that difficult.