Ethical boundary,
aesthetic boundary
of sport as of art.
Without limits
there is no value;
without value,
there is no esteem,
no respect and especially no pity:
death to the referee!
—the fatal habituation
to the banalization of excess.

–excerpt Silence on Trial p 33
by Paul Virilio

What is missing? It is Friday morning. With good fortune perhaps I’ll have a productive day at work. What are the odds? I have a sense of unease. I recognize that by temperament unease is my default. I have sufficient self awareness to identify events of my past that figure in. The past is never really over.

Again this morning I scanned the front page of the NY Times while waiting for my coffee here at Starbucks. I noted an article recognizing that the President has laid aside the script of civility and has resumed his belittling attacks on his political opponents. The mailing of multiple pipe bombs to his critics prompted a traditional appeal for calm and solidarity. He managed to maintain the stance for a single day and now it is back to the attack. I doubt that he perceives the ethos created and exacerbated by his words.

I conclude that what is missing can be summed up in a word: empathy. Those he despises, fears, vilifies, eviscerates especially in his mass campaign rallies: democrats, liberals, leftists, women, immigrants, petitioners for asylum, are perceived threats to national security. There is no empathy, no recognition that these are just human beings.

The President is a man without boundaries, unaware of standards of propriety, unresponsive to norms. He is a child of excess and does not understand the concept of limit. It seems that he has a considerable amount of support, among my fellow Americans. These are friends and neighbors who frankly believe the surreal, absurd promises continually held out by the pitchmen and women on television. That insanely expensive, tricked out, big-as-a-boxcar-pickup truck is the key to restored youth, a sheet metal shot of testosterone. The Presidents angry irrational words do not seem that far fetched.

As an act of protest and as an effort of self consolation I’ll post this old tune. As a sophomore in high school I had the good fortune to double date with a good friend. The four of us attended a concert by Frankie Vallie and The Four Seasons at the Duke University basketball arena. This song was performed live.

The song is about empathy.