This just in: There’s no wizard behind the curtain, and nobody’s actually in charge. There’s no shadowy cabal of billionaires scheming to bring about one-world government. To begin with, nobody clever enough to accumulate that much money believes that such a thing is A.) remotely possible, or B.) even desirable.
If the world seems scary and confusing, that’s because it’s scarier and more confusing than usual of late, although nowhere near as frightening as it was to Grandpa. Here’s the opening stanza of W.H. Auden’s great poem, September 1, 1939:
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Auden wrote to commemorate that terrible day Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland, triggering World War II, the most cataclysmic struggle in human history. Some 70 to 85 million people, military and civilian, died before it was over. Continue reading.