After World War I and the Russian Revolution as shrill voices for one ideology or another were raised, William Butler Yeats wrote:
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;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Tom Ehrich quoted this in a column published in today's Star Tribune, a column on the bloviation of attack commentators. He explains bloviation as pompous and boastful oration. For example, Edward Everett's two-hour oration at Gettysburg, compared with Abraham Lincoln's two-minute speech.
Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest who writes for Religion News Service. You'll have to get the Sept. 11 Star Tribune to read his column. The Strib doesn't put columns online and the RNS charges for most of its articles.
Attack politics doesn't want compromise, only destruction of the "enemy". If a resolution of a problem benefits citizens will work to the opposition's favor, then no way will the attack politicians favor it. This is not governance, but rebellion and sedition. No wonder attack politicians want their supporters to carry guns to town hall meetings.
