How do I say this?  On this Sunday afternoon the Superbowl spectacle is to be staged in Minneapolis.  I find it hard to care.  I am stuck back on groundhog day, February the 2nd. It was a sunny day, Punxsutawny Phil returned to his burrow and thus six more weeks of winter are in store–end of story.  That sticks in my mind.  The Superbowl, that spectacle of spectacles seems less important to me.

Groundhog day is an old legend.  It is a myth from a time when our lives were much more connected to nature.  The groundhog emerges from his burrow after a winter sleep to look for his shadow.  If there is no shadow, an omen of early spring, he remains above ground, active and preparing for the sun’s warmth that will thaw the ground, and call new life to emerge.

Subject to the workings of my mind, somehow I connect an image of Punxsutawny Phil in the arms of his handlers (you remember the movie Groundhog Day don’t you?) after emerging from Gobbler’s Knob, and the State of the Union Speech delivered to Congress and the Nation by Donald J. Trump on January 30.

In his speech it was as if the President was asserting ad nauseum that he does not, let me repeat once more, “does not” cast a shadow.  The speech was a campaign-like hortatory paen to his accomplishments in the first year of his presidency.  The President does not see his accomplishments as the cruel words and policies that they are.  The subtext to his self-congratulatory oration was the Mueller investigation.  He is under investigation for colluding with the Russians to corrupt the election of 2016.  Thus the drumbeat of denial, direct and indirect that he sustains using his twitter feed.  The latest assault on the investigation is the memo created by a member of congress who is admittedly a partisan of the President.  The memo seeks to disparage the FBI and the Department of Justice as impartial institutions of government.  Trump, unlike Punxsutawny Phil, is unable to find his shadow on a sunny day.

The sun is shining and we are in for a very long, very cold winter.

There was one element of the President’s State of the Union oration that brought a chill to my mind when I later read the text of the speech.

“So tonight, I call on the Congress to empower every Cabinet Secretary with the authority to reward good workers — and to remove Federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people.” 

–excerpt State of the Union address by Donald J. Trump Jan. 30, 2018

This sounds like a loyalty test to me.  The “palace guard” is tasked with examining career bureaucrats on the matter of their personal loyalty to the chief executive and his administration.

I was reminded of the story of Nero, and his minister, Seneca.  Seneca had more than a mere professional relationship to his old boss.  In earlier years he had worked as a tutor to Nero before Nero’s accession to being the Head of State of the Roman Empire.  The story goes that Nero sent a military tribune to question Seneca as to whether he had anything to do with a plot against Nero.  Seneca answered that in his advanced years he had no interest in such things.  Receiving Seneca’s reply, Nero told his tribune to return and say, “Tell him to kill himself.”

And so it goes.