The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity

W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Are ‘the best’ and ‘the worst’ of Yeats’s poem groups of people, or is he referring to the human condition, the internal struggle that each of us wages daily between our better angels and our lesser impulses and temptations, between good and evil? The latter reading fits the current presidential race: Democrat Kamala Harris’s platform stresses joy and positivity, while Republican Donald J. Trump has been stirring up negative passions among his supporters. And while those red hats do not say “Make America Hate Again,” they might as well, because the former president and his enablers have made it perfectly acceptable to wallow in bigotry, hatred, threats of violence, and–far too often–violence.

Don’t dismiss Trump as a clown, riffing and rambling and ranting in his interminably long rallies.  His off-the-cuff references to sharks, windmills, and Arnold Palmer’s genitalia may amuse his passionate followers, but this ‘bread and circuses’ approach should not be allowed to obscure what’s really going on, “laughing into fascism.”

November 5th–the most significant election of our lifetimes and perhaps in our nation’s history–is around the corner, and one candidate represents a clear and present danger to America and the world.

Early in October the New York Times printed a special section, “30 Days Until the Election,” to contrast and compare the views of Harris and Trump on major issues.  “Here’s what you need to know,” the Times’s subhead declared. Because I spent 41 years reporting on public education, I was disappointed to find not one word about education or schools. 

In fact, the two platforms’ positions on education could not be more different.  Project 2025, the real GOP platform, calls for the virtual abolition of public education.  Schooling becomes a private family matter, flipping centuries of tradition out the window.  More precisely, that would mean vouchers and what are known as ‘Education Savings Accounts.’  An ESA means that parents can direct their share of education funding to a private school or whatever entity the family is using to educate their children–including themselves.  Homeschooling your children?  Keep the money and spend it as you see fit to ‘educate’ your children, including trips to Disneyland and athletic equipment!  

The Democratic party still believes in what the former Republican party once believed in: Free public education with a common purpose:  to give all children the opportunity to acquire the knowledge, skills,  and tools they need to thrive as individuals and as citizens of our democracy. In short, Democrats believe in the importance of community.   Project 2025 would abolish the U.S. Department of Education completely, while the Democrats would emphasize the federal responsibility for ensuring that all children–particularly those from low income families, those with handicapping conditions, the homeless, and those whose first language is not English–are treated equitably.  Basically, Democrats believe that all kids should have access to the resources they need, regardless of which state they live in and their family, racial, or religious status.   Project 2025 would end any federal oversight and protection.  

I don’t mean to whitewash the record here, because Democrats in Washington have done as much damage to public schools as Republicans in recent years.  Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” was just as destructive as George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind.”  But it seems likely that having a former high school teacher as Vice President will bring some common sense to Washington and end the federal overreach that characterized those two Administrations.

W. B. Yeats’s magnificent poem, “The Second Coming,” is painfully relevant today, because our center has not been holding, and that rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem is an unqualified, self-absorbed would-be dictator and convicted felon with clearly diminished capabilities.

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.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

When Yeats composed ‘The Second Coming,’ the world was in turmoil, ravaged by World War I and a flu pandemic that killed 18,000,000 people. Does that sound eerily familiar?  When we cast our ballots, will our ‘better angels’ win out over our selfish and negative impulses? Do the best of us lack all conviction, while the worst of us are full of passionate intensity?  

We will find out on November 5th.