The Prelude - the Trump first year

on
Franz Liszt, composer
of Les Preludes about
150 years or so ago

You've heard this a million times - mostly as background music to the Lone Ranger type of TV serial westerns and countless Warner Brothers Cartoons.

About a million years ago, I got to conduct this piece with the American Symphony Orchestra League in NY.  I loved it. Others thought and still do think it trite but I've found that these are the same folks who associate the William Tell Overture with the Lone Ranger theme song. Something about the theme of this piece follows but I want to take this brief occasion, while this country seems to be in the prelude to some horrible happenstance.

LaMartines d'après Lamartine (Les Preludes)
"What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown Hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death?—Love is the glowing dawn of all existence; but what is the fate where the first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm, the mortal blast of which dissipates its fine illusions, the fatal lightning of which consumes its altar; and where is the cruelly wounded soul which, on issuing from one of these tempests, does not endeavor to rest his recollection in the calm serenity of life in the fields? Nevertheless man hardly gives himself up for long to the enjoyment of the beneficent stillness which at first he has shared in Nature's bosom, and when "the trumpet sounds the alarm", he hastens, to the dangerous post, whatever the war may be, which calls him to its ranks, in order at last to recover in the combat full consciousness of himself and entire possession of his energy".


 Herr Trump seems to be on a rampage. During the day it is one horrendous executive order after another and congress meets at night to push through legislation that will be the end of
Herr Trump
us.  The EPA is about to go.  The clean air act and clear water acts are soon to be history. Education is in the hands of the religious right wing and they are committed to not letting it survive.  The State Department is being cut as is most every other department that positively effects our lives.  And why?  There is no real answer given by Herr Trump because he is too busy flying to Florida or sitting on the can and tweeting.

 Our government is in shambles. In many cases only 20% of the appointed posts are filled. The cabinet is just beginning to fill up.  The secretary of the interior rode to work on a horse. The energy secretary doesn't know what the table of elements is or the difference between atomic and hydrogen. Carson, certainly the slowest and dullest of clods is off to HUD and the abbreviation had to be explained to him.

 I fear for the Republic.