The snow falls this morning in a steady curtain.  Vehicles, one by one speed by in a swirling wake of icy turbulence.  Another morning in wintry Illinois.  There is inevitable friction, turbulence, a rift between the world of human artifice called “civilization” and Nature.  From the beginning of humankind, the awakening of consciousness by the employment of language, this conflict is the norm, according to writings of Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche and many others that I have read.

A current instance of this friction, this dissonance, the frayed loose-ends of existence is the individual who presently occupies the White House.

“Walls work 100 percent…..
So everyone knows that walls work.

Walls work 100 percent…..
So everyone knows that walls work.

Walls work 100 percent…..
So everyone knows that walls work.”

–excerpt Rose Garden Speech imposing state of National Emergency, President Donald J. Trump

The quality of a civilization depends upon its ability to discern and reveal truth, and this depends upon the scope and purity of its language.

Any dictator attempts to degrade the language because this is a way to mystify. And many of the quasi-automatic operations of capitalist industrial society tend also toward mystification and the blunting of verbal precision.

–excerpt from Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature by Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 8, 1999)