A Humbled President, Ctd

A reader writes:

You're right: There does not seem like much can or will be done. The quanta of our political dynamics leaves everything in place for another year ... No legitimate, mindful levers on the horizon, so it seems that we have few choices but to endure as they play out this course it will play itself out then try to clean up, patch up, move ahead when he is gone from office.

It's put me in a T.S. Eliot mood,

         ...human kind
cannot bear very much reality.

And a bit of East Coker for a chaser:

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
...

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
    You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
    You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
    You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
    You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.