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Thursday 27 November 2014

W.B. Yeats: The Second Coming (A Sideshow)

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Can't front, this #sideshow looks poppin. Lmao!: image via Eric Junior @ericjunior, 27 November 2014


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: somewhere in sands of the desert
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
Reel 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?

W.B. Yeats: The Second Coming, 1919, first published in The Dial, 1920
 


Helicopter covering protests catches a sideshow in action. Classic #oakland move: image via Michael Cosentino @cosentino, 27 November 2014
 

#Oakland Police have guns drawn aimed from behind at large #sideshow. At least 100+ cars being blocked in: images via ReallyRick @TheReallyRick, 27 November 2014 Oakland, CA

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Extremely heavy police presence at port of #Oakland after shots fired. Police break up sideshow, have them surrounded: image via Veronica De La Cruz @VeronicaDLCruz, 27 November 2014  


Then people scrambled and were blocked on all sides. #sideshow over: images via Stan A. @PureStanarchy, 27 November 2014
 
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A car fire. (Yes, that is a Port of #Oakland mployee driving a forklift on other side of the fence.) #sideshow: images via Oaklandish Chick @oaklandishchick, 27 November 2014 


They set fire to a car and The police are just near by. I can smell revolution!!! #oakland #Ferguson: images via vänsterflatan @Vansterflatan, 27 November 2014 

Vehicle goes up in flames after #sideshow. Both sides of Maritime blocked by cops, boxing in cars #Oakland port: image via Veronica De La Cruz @VeronicaDLCruz, 27 November 2014 
 

Holy hell, this sideshow in #Oakland is nuts! First they try to ram their way out, and now a car's on fire: image via Tom Dan @TomDanTheRock, 27 November 2014
 

omg, they are trying to break through the fence like #j28. #oakland #sideshow: image via mary mad @marymad, 27 November 2014 


One of cars trapped by police gets caught trying to break thru fence. People trying to escape cops #Oakland #sideshow: image via Veronica De La Cruz @VeronicaDLCruz, 27 November 2014 


Some pedestrians on foot try to leave area, are turned back by police in #oakland #oaklandsideshow: image via Bill Budington @legind, 27 November 2014


Hard to see but appears to be about 10 men sitting on ground hands behind their backs arrested. #Oakland #Sideshowd in: images via ReallyRick @TheReallyRick, 27 November 2014 Oakland, CA
 

Yeah looks scary RT @sfchronicle: #Oakland sees violent protests for 3rd straight night #Ferguson: image via Catherine Bracy @cbracy, 27 November 2014

6 comments:

TC said...

About things going round in circles they were never wrong,
The Old Masters.

Richie Rich: Side Show (1990)

Elmo St. Rose said...

The battle for Civil Rights was hard fought. It consisted of
tens of millions of acts of courage,decency,sacrifice,learning, love, and joy by millions. Now we
have the mendacity of a Sharpton
who seeks 2nd class citizenship
for millions so his rap will still be relevant to his wallet.
As in the old spiritual "We shall
overcome...."

TC said...

It should be understood that for better or worse the sideshow, noisome as it may seem to outsiders, represents a form of political expression which in its defiance of authority makes a statement for which there is no other effective vehicle.

The old politics has routinely been a matter of greed and ambition, with individual politicians in the forefront. The old politics has been seen through for the deception it is. Those it has betrayed have learnt not to look to individual leaders. All appearances of structure in this society now stand vulnerable to outbreaks of chaos. The authorities are aware of this, which is why you will now see any potential trouble site surrounded or "kettled" (blocked, bottled up, hemmed in) by law enforcement en masse. These are perforce battleground techniques. Oakland is a battleground. People there have their own reasons. They don't have to ask Al Sharpton for a reason. Cars, fires, freeways, darkness, confusion, fear, this is hell, this is urban warfare, this is America now, happy Thanksgiving.

Elmo St. Rose said...

Well,Tom, I think you are overrating what Marx referred to
as the "lumpen proletariat"

War, what war? get a real job,
or find leaders who can get you
a real job.

So much beauty and so much truth
in life of a real poet...Happy
Thanksgiving for that

Elmo St. Rose said...

Yeats' poem about Ireland getting its freedom and someone still
breaking stone.

If the mob showed up on Marin,
would they recognize your poems
or just want your house?

TC said...

Elmo, I had thought Yeats's poem the rhetorical raving of an apocalyptic right-wing nut spilling out his dread of the masses in a way that betrays his understandable paranoia.

They wouldn't want my house. Too funky. They wouldn't be able to have a sideshow out front. Too much traffic.

(What's with this Grand Inquisitor bit, by the way, Doc?)