“The ability to produce every necessity of life renders us independent in war as well as in peace.” – Millard Fillmore
Trump is correct in the desire for an absolute utility and necessity of bringing manufacturing and agriculture back from overseas, where and when possible, without unnecessary ruin to our economy.
“No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.” – Daniel Dennett
Hills and Valleys To Die On
by Michael Doyle
Stretching my SUV across the Greater Ohio Valley
I see what my travels bring closer to me
Here in what were once considered idle spaces
Are the dreams that leave me etching their traces
The displacement is felt as the strangers encroach
The wilderness disappears at the uncivil approach
French hymns echo away the fragility of harmony
As tension dominates and clarifies history's complexity
These are the hills and valleys to die on
All those ghosts of the past already gone
Screaming out like an Iroquois war cry
We push the borders without questioning why
These are the valleys and hills to die on
My angelic muse sits near, but the past is gone
Silver tongues turned to bullets, leaving debts unpaid
Her mystic dance is written on the shadows played
Peace was fleeting in its uncherished fragility
As time travels, in reflection, it loses its harmony
Conflicts loomed in the tensions of this wilderness
Wilderness offers promises and its betrayed kiss
Reading the wampum of each discarded treaty
This land mediated the battles that became history
Borders have given way to tire tracks discarded
Tattoos of misbehavior have become well-regarded
These are the hills and valleys to die on
All those ghosts of the past already gone
Screaming out like an Iroquois war cry
We push the borders without questioning why
These are the valleys and hills to die on
My angelic muse sits near, but the past is gone
Silver tongues turned to bullets, leaving debts unpaid
Her mystic dances are written on the shadows played
The valley we travel through is witness to every ceded change
As treaties, villages, and boundaries came to rearrange
Expanding and retracting paired with a glass of resilience
The nation has become known for its sense of brilliance
The middle ground sets the stage for its control
Each people becomes part of the valley's cherished soul
Its contested space has become a confluence of culture
Blending like rivers merging, unified but its nurture
These are the hills and valleys to die on
All those ghosts of the past already gone
Screaming out like an Iroquois war cry
We push the borders without questioning why
These are the valleys and hills to die on
My angelic muse sits near, but the past is gone
Silver tongues turned to bullets, leaving debts unpaid
Her mystic dances are written on the shadows played
(c) March 27, 2025 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, ‘whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,’ and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.” – John Adams
“Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST.” – Frank Zappa
An Angel Imperfectly
by Michael Doyle
In protection from life's adversity
An angel spread his wings imperfectly
Knowing that life has limited mercy
To protect us from the things of history
More profound than deep, I hear the river flow
Somewhere beside where life's garden grows
A tower of debris keeps getting taller
While our humanity grows ever smaller
Helplessly flung by the winds into the future
We wonder what it is we should have nurtured
Having survived affliction, we are unmoored
Reshaped by the wounds that we have endured
History is its own curse at prophecy
All the things we thought we'd do to you and me
The end and the past meet in this, we call today
Without a moment more left for us to give away
I wonder what it will take to make us whole
As we grasp at hope in living through catastrophe
Drifting on safely as time slips into the past
Wouldn't it have been nice if nice could last?
Helplessly flung by the winds into the future
We wonder what it is we should have nurtured
Having survived affliction, we are unmoored
Reshaped by the wounds that we have endured
(c) March 26, 2025 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“In time of peace there can, at all events, be no justification for the creation of a permanent debt by the Federal Government. Its limited range of constitutional duties may certainly under such circumstances be performed without such a resort.” – Martin Van Buren
“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.” – Viktor E. Frankl
A Nation's Passion Play
by Michael Doyle
From our earliest days, when we dwelt in caves,
We have tried to understand what it is that saves
Our rarest sentiments are served up like a delicacy
These are questionable as we define principled liberty
It is a hard road to pretend we're a civilized country
When we hung on so hard to the viciousness of slavery
Childish illusions struggle and toss around us nearly daily
Lost in the shame of the great escape, we are betrayed, maybe
We think it bold to speak of freedom with great sympathy
Toward those we don't hold as brothers in feigned empathy
Condemnation is the feeling behind our grasp of freedom
Despite the complexity, we hope we are spared wisdom
Held in the same chains by which we hold any others in
The best we have is the worst of the lesser man's sins
These are insurmountable in flavor that restrain our power
As we bend our bloody knees for moments of our best hours
Civilization, then, is the best influence of a good woman
Who can look us in the eyes and cure us of our inflicted demon
Crossing the stormy seas, barely managing to keep control
Until the power of love manages to hold onto our souls
We think it bold to speak of freedom with great sympathy
Toward those we don't hold as brothers in feigned empathy
Condemnation is the feeling behind our grasp of freedom
Despite the complexity, we hope we are spared wisdom
(c) March 25, 2025 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” – Theodore Roosevelt
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