Donald Trump

‘’American Carnage” words and music by Donald J. Trump

July 27, 2024, from The New York Times

Homicides in U.S. Continue to Fall from Pandemic Highs

“An analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice cautions that progress has been uneven, with the trend being driven by declines in a handful of big cities.”

In New York City, in the 8th grade of public schools, we got introduced to poetry–of a certain kind. Let’s say, the kind that wore its heart on its sleeve: “Trees,” “Invictus,” “In Flanders Field,” “Casey at the Bat,” “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix:”stop me before I cry. One of them, by Sir Walter Scott, which seemed to have no title, was the one I reprint below. Like the others I’ve referenced, it stayed at the level I’m indulging here, before we got to the real thing a couple of years later: “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “The Second Coming,” “Dover Beach.”

I came across Scott’s poem the other day, and suddenly it rang a sharp, clear, bell: resonant, as though atop a cathedral, or, perhaps, Independence Hall, in front of which Ben Franklin answered the question, “What kind of government have you created, sir?–“A Republic, if you can keep it.” That’s getting quoted a lot, these days. The poem follows:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.