The truths of humanism,
the confidence in mankind and all the rest,
still possess only the vigor of fictions,
only a prosperity of shadows.
The West was these truths;
it is no more than these fictions, these shadows.
as helpless as they,
it has not been given to the West to verify them.

It drags them along, exposes them,
but no longer imposes them;
they have ceased to be threatening.
Hence, those who cling to humanism
make use of an exhausted expression,
without an affective support
— a spectral substantive.

Excerpt, All Gall is Divided by E. M. Cioran p. 99

Saturday.  I dreamed for the first time in months in the early morning hours.  The mechanism of dreams is unknown.  What prompts visions to rise up from the semi-conscious, in the minutes when the light dispels the darkness on the eastern horizon, when the body begins to rouse from REM sleep?  I do not remember details of the dream…

I wonder if news received before lying down to sleep, the infrastructure bill had passed a vote in the House of Representatives, was the catalyst for dreaming?  I was dismayed that the President, and those who control the levers of power in Congress were willing to decouple the physical infrastructure bill, from another bill, serving as a complement, the social infrastructure bill.  What is the point of repairing bridges, filling potholes, passing out borrowed money to agencies and institutions when the social fabric of the nation is in tatters?  According to my sense of our condition, — the decrepitude of public education in many communities, the widening economic gap between the few who benefit from capitalism and the less fortunate majority, the monopolistic power wielded by Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. — the social infrastructure bill was the more important of the two legislative measures.

Subsequent to the decoupling what are the odds of a commitment of resources to address the corrosive effects of capitalism?  The odds are zero.  If I am wrong, I will admit as much.

Six House Democrats voted against the $1.2 trillion bill.  I imagine that I would have joined them in opposing the bill.

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