The circus of our times

I have recalled few dreams of late, but seen a waking nightmare of crowds adoring a man and moved to passion by his wound as though it were the bleeding wound of the Christ on the cross.
Such colour, such noise, such songs of praise and worshipful hands and faces.

 

Beside it, I recall a black and white image of another time when adoring masses desperate for a saviour worshipped a different man who also promised to make his country great again, and led it and much of the world to disaster. Our modern man sometimes even uses the language of that earlier one, "referring to his political opponents as 'vermin' and saying illegal immigrants are 'poisoning the blood of our country' (abcnews.go.com).

 

I see all this outside of me, in the world, yet it resonates powerfully within me like the deep ring of a great bell. My moods have been dark of late, rising and falling. They feel full of portent. I want to cry for the world.

 

What, I have to ask, fills me with dread, outrage and at the same time, almost unbearable sadness? The archetype of mindless masses is upon us again.