The Ire of Power

Among the greater qualities of Frank Herbert's recently re-lauded Dune saga is the question of power, and how it is not a feast of . And apart from the truly disgusting, to most of its non-contemporary viewers, examples the 

Equally true, it must seem now, is the notion that the president of the United States, the informal "leader of the free world", quotation marks to observe the too-obvious contradiction, could not be the firm authority demanded by the office, short of a Palpatinesque performance now wielded against his chances of maintaining that office, and thus - from the far cry of opposition, rather than succumbing in name to a successor - the power flowing from (if not alongside) it, imperium and potestas and auctoritas in all. 

A Sloping Roof

The metaphor of roof, substituted for the more appropriate "ceiling" in a famous clash of minds, usually utilised to herald the limits (or non-limits) for political , saw a swift to the exterior with the humbug excuse offered 

How much, it must now be asked, has this sloping roof cost the Biden campaign, perhaps undeservingly. Notwithstanding, as some have observed, elements in the Democratic party have rallied to legislate away the once and future president's already questioned security detail, 

Day of Liberty - and Death

 

The supposed juxtaposition, or very real in verbal terms, of "liberty" and "democracy", sometimes with "peace" and "co-operation" juxtaposed just as much against a menacing "division" (begging, yet again, the qeustion the frontier between opposition and division lies within this healthy democracy) are seldom taken to the extreme so much, and perhaps so earnestly, as with the flying of lead and passing of steel. I myself wrote, now nearly six years past and near half the lifespan of this publication, of the attempt on the Brazilian "Trump's" life, the lugubrious and since-convicted (following a proud Brazilian tradition, or perhaps - or not - of its judiciary)