Space Force ... and beyond!

My contributor copy of Space Force has arrived.

At the time of writing, B-Cubed are still the only publishers who will publish my poetry.  I like to think this shows discernment on their part.  

I normally write traditional ballads that both rhyme and scan.  These days, that seems to be a cardinal sin in a genre dominated by what I tend to call badly-punctuated prose. By this I mean that the only way you can recognise it as poetry is because it's in a poetry book.

There's no point getting annoyed about this, however.  The people in charge aren't going to change their minds, and all one can do is wait for the fashion to move on. 

I knew things were really bad one year that a TV gardening programme ran a poetry competition and all the first four poems were "free verse."

Anyhow, The Space Force Hymn is a little skit on the US Marine Hymn, "From the Halls of Montezuma" which is written in the good old style.

Why isn't Britain apologizing for what they have done to this world? (From Quora)

When a question is self-contradictory, it does not help our understanding.

Britain is a singular noun which tends to be used as shorthand for Great Britain, the island which is in itself part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. “They” is a plural pronoun and has no point of reference within the question.

Since the inanimate is presumably blameless, one is left to surmise that the persons intended by “they” may be the inhabitants of the aforementioned island, presumably the living ones, since the dead ones are in no position to apologise for anything. However, it is far from clear what the present inhabitants of Britain are alleged to have done.

Apologies only make sense when offered by the perpetrator of an offence to the victim. One cannot meaningfully apologise for things one has not done, (unless one ought to have done them, in which case we speak of sins of omission). Nor can one meaningfully apologise for what someone else has done. If offenders wish to apologise, they can apologise for themselves. If they do not wish to apologise, then no one else has the standing to apologise on their behalf.

No one is morally obliged to take responsibility for the behaviour of earlier generations. The present generation does not deserve credit for the good actions, nor blame for the bad actions, of earlier generations.

Reparations for bad actions that took place centuries ago cannot be required of current populations. In any case, it would be next to impossible to separate current populations into those who are and are not descended from the alleged perpetrators. To give just one example, what sense does it make to demand compensation be paid by descendants of an oppressed English factory worker of the late eighteenth century to descendants of an oppressed plantation slave of the late eighteenth century? It should be needless to point out that far more of the current British population are descended from factory hands than from capitalists.

As Cicero said, “O tempora! O mores!” We cannot retrospectively impose our values on the past and hope to emerge from that abstract process with anything resembling a fair judgement. Iconoclasts who think that, by erasing visible signs and symbols of the past, they will achieve anything positive, are simply deluded. You cannot punish the dead; they are immune to your rancour. You can only increase the likelihood that the living will forget the mistakes of the past and hence, through ignorance, increase the risk of repetitions of those errors in the future. In short, one man’s current virtue signalling is another man’s unforgivable cultural vandalism.

For good or ill, the past is gone. The present and the future have more than enough challenges for the living.

Boris Johnson compared the struggle of Ukrainians fighting Russia's invasion to people in Britain voting for Brexit. What are your thoughts? (From Quora)

We have known this principle for a very long time. “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand”. (Matthew 12:25)

There is a fine line to be drawn between loyal opposition and actively undermining the policies of one’s country.

The spectrum of loyalty ranges from,“My country, right or wrong,” at one extreme, to “My way or the highway,” at the other. Those who espouse the latter position are so utterly confident of the correctness of their position that they despise those who disagree with them and can never be reconciled to losing a democratic vote.

The similarities between Putin, who could not accept the removal of his Ukrainian puppet and immediately began scheming to recover by force what he could not have any other way, and the relatively small number of Extreme Remainers in the UK who were, and still are, determined to reverse a popular vote, are quite striking, even if the violence employed by the latter is, fortunately, confined to language.

Immediate resort to abuse, with no attempt at reasoning, is common to both. Brexiteers are no more stupid than Zelensky is Nazi, but caricaturing your opponent rather than treating him as a human being with legitimate rights and aspirations, makes it easier both to hate and to incite hatred.

Clinging to a past that, if it ever existed at all, is viewed through rose-tinted spectacles, holding grudges long after the justification has gone, wilfully misinterpreting any and every event as proof of your own prejudice, and obstinately refusing to adapt and advance are also common characteristics.

At the very least, this sort of attitude is tedious, frustrating and insulting to those who don’t share it. At the worst it will destroy a society rather than see it change in any direction other than the desired one.

And in the end, some people would rather sit amidst the rubble (which in one case may be metaphorical) and say ‘I told you so,’ than share in a prosperous future that is not achieved by their desired method.

I don’t know whether this is what the PM was saying. It’s just the direction my thoughts took after seeing the question.