“The Worst Are Full Of Passionate Intensity”

The Birmingham Alabama Temple — There actually ARE some Latter-day Saints — and, I’m betting, some returned missionaries — in Alabama. But not enough for either Roy Moore or Steve Bannon to worry about.
(LDS Media Library)

I posted an entry yesterday — see “Back of the Bus, Book of Mormon Boy!” — about the disgusting Trumpist bigot Steve Bannon and his cynically dishonest venture into anti-Mormon demagoguery. Here’s a bit more on that uplifting theme:

National Review: “The Garbage Case for Roy Moore”

National Review: “Bannon’s Ill-Conceived War on the Establishment”

The Weekly Standard: “Bannon Attacks Romney’s Mormonism: Says the former presidential candidate ‘hid behind’ his religion to avoid war.”

The Washington Post: “Stephen Bannon’s anti-Mormon comments betray his burn-it-all-down attitude toward the GOP”

CNN: “Steve Bannon’s shameful dog whistle”

Salt Lake Tribune: “Gehrke: Steve Bannon’s attack wasn’t just targeting Mitt Romney, it pitted Alabama’s evangelicals against Mormons”

The Hill: “Meghan McCain knocks Bannon: ‘Who the hell are you’ to criticize Romney?”

Daily Beast: “How Low Can They Go? Steve Bannon Lays Into Romney: No Room for Decency in Today’s GOP: Mittens poked at Roy Moore on Twitter. Bannon immediately smeared him on military service grounds (!) and religious ones (!!). So long, integrity.”

Vox: “Steve Bannon lashes out at Mitt Romney in Alabama. This is probably just the beginning. The next round might be over a Utah Senate seat.”

Daily Intelligencer: “The Flaw in Strategic Genius Steve Bannon’s Plan to Sour Utah Voters on Mitt Romney”

“Cannon Attacks Romney for Draft Dodging — But Breitbart Chief’s Former Boss, Trump, Has Also Faced Questions over War Record”

If you have 21.5 minutes, former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough and others discuss Bannon’s repulsive remarks here:

“Joe: Steve Bannon shows he’s frightened of Romney running in Utah”

“Arizona GOP Rep. Trent Franks to resign following sexual harassment claim” (It’s perhaps worth noting that the noble and virtuous Rep. Franks was a principal opponent of the evil non-Trumpist Mormon senator Jeff Flake.)

“Utah’s Rep. Mia Love calls for Texas GOP congressman Blake Farenthold to resign”

***

The great Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) wrote his famous poem “The Second Coming” fairly late in 1919, in the immediate wake of World War One. The rise to national prominence of the loathsome Steve Bannon has reminded me, particularly, of the first stanza of this rather curious “Christmas poem”:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

“The worst are full of passionate intensity”