Yawp!

Diogenes understands Walt Whitman and his need to send his "barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

Voices that believe in a cause can't be silenced, even by their owners. When there is rottenness in the world it must be called out. There is nothing more rotten in the world at this time than the Trump presidency, and Diogenes' voice has to speak. And if no one hears or listens? The words are out there, forever zipping through cyberspace, and perhaps they'll have an effect. If not, at least they've been spoken. Dio realizes this is odd reasoning, but is also aware that if he doesn't utter those words he will lose his self-respect. Someone will hear. Someone always does.

Diogenes has been contemplating government. Writers through the ages have considered the question of how government, i.e. those with power, should best treat the governed, i.e. those without power.

History indicates that those governments that do not treat their citizens fairly and humanely frequently come under attack. The length of time a government may be in power is not a measure of its stability. Ruthless governments unafraid of using their strength can last a long time--witness Rome. But ultimately they fall, either due to attack from outside forces or internal rebellion or from their own rotten core.

Diogenes cannot believe the American people will allow the Trump administration to continue even one term. Why? Consider this note jotted down by Abraham Lincoln in preparation for some speeches he was making in 1859: "The people — are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it."  

And this, from Lincoln's first inauguration address, March 4, 1861: "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."

Food for thought.

--Richard Brown