| | | I think of the price of gold and Queen Elizabeth II among the noisy rabble. Eternal verities. Gold has gone from being born in a previous star, crystalizing and separating as do carbon and other atoms with electromagnetic force into diamond, or nuggets, or DNA, or salt diapers, seams of coal, ice kilometres deep. Birds of a feather flock together. For thousands of years, gold has sat as a central measure of value. Queen Elizabeth II has magnetically acted as a nucleation site for Virtuous Victorian Values for the heaving mass of humanity in her realm as a long litany of prime ministerial pretenders to power have come and gone. I can't now think of them all as I can of USA presidents who get a very distinct 4 or 8 years of strutting.
She has seen come and go in her life Mr Peace in Our time, Winston Churchill, a couple of others, Harold MacMillan, Ted Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major who was minor, Tony Blair, Brown, Cameron ... if you said their names I'd remember them well, but like Japanese prime ministers and Italians, they are a dime a dozen. Google could give me the list in a second. Callaghan and others slip my mind. She has been a constant beacon of Virtuous Victorian Values, vowing to serve her people whether her life be long or short. No scrabbling for power to strut the stage in self-aggrandisement.
I recall presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump all come and gone during her regnum. Another is due to have their turn roaring around the sky in Air Force One. None of them achieved their vaunted energy independence from OPEC beginning in 1974.
Do they want another 8 years of Bill in the White House? Or replay the century of failed Euroserf strategy of Eurosclerosis in semi-communist kleptocracy and suffocatocracy? Or will they make America Great Again? Trump says he'll smash Tim Cook, Apple and anyone who opposes him. "All your data are belong to me." The nature of power lusting megalomaniacs everywhere. The individual to be a mere star in the galaxy of glory of the empire. Millions of people swirling around and around the centre as stars do around galaxies black holes of government at the centre, like Moslems around the kaba in Mecca. No individual, just submission.
After Trump has been and gone, the price of gold will be still the cost of 20 barrels of oil [near enough for government work, your mileage may vary] and Queen Elizabeth II will still be there, only 98 orbits of the sun, looking forwards to the party of the century.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Mqurice |
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