The Politics of Dancing

  American Ignorance Watching one of my favourite films again, Inherit the Wind, - there are two versions, the first featuring Spencer Tracey, the second Jack Lemon in the lead role. The film is based on the Scopes ‘monkey trial’ of 1926, in which the teaching of Charles Darwin was prosecuted   in a small American community.   Without going further into the mechanics of the film the gist of the plot   is the triumph of intelligence over bigotry and ignorance. Watching the film these days no longer has the same impact on me, for at present the laughable bigotry of the Scopes trial reigns triumphant in Trumpian America. The US secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, - incidentally a man so riddled with sin, original or otherwise, from adultery to sexual bullying and violence, he could challenge Trump himself in the moral bankruptcy stakes, - now openly promotes a pastor who opposes women’s enfranchisement and holds that women must be subservient to men, always. There role ...

Who would have a Catholic conscience?  After the inquisition the torture  After the burning of books. After the Jew hate and ghettos   The bonfires and screaming pain.  After South America  After Chile and Spain. After Franco, Tiso and Pavelic  After Pinochet. After the ratlines and the Nazis rescued by monks.  After child rape and torture across the globe In Ireland and Chile and the cities across Spain. Who would have a Catholic conscience?  Those who still chant clutching of beads  In an institution which Has scarred mankind and made so very many sick.