An eclipse is less than meets the eye.
There was a solar eclipse a few days ago that covered a band of geography from Dallas to Burlington. People congregated to watch it, sure to wear their protective lenses so as not to harm their eyes. Such an eclipse would not happen again for a quarter century and so was a major event, but it just meant no eclipse would happen till then over the United States. There would be a band over the North Atlantic including over Iceland next year. Book your cruises for that. Why such a big ado because of a solar eclipse?
I have never been much interested in astronomy. I don't care that much about the elliptical plane or the two moons orbiting Mars. I liked science fiction so I could visit other civilizations just a warp drive trip away. And so I was not taken with the solar eclipse that crossed the United States and covered extensively by cable news, CNN now located in a tall building in Hudson Yards where so many were crowded into a small platform that many would have died if there had been a panic, and MSNBC at old reliable 30 Rock, where I have heard the news broadcasts since I was a kid.
I think cable news is still killing time until the Stormy Daniels case when there will be sleazy gossip and interesting characters to see on the screen including Stormy and Hope Hicks and Michael Cohen and maybe the Orange One himself. It starts on Monday when there will be detailed coverage at least at the beginning and will be of moment in revealing something about a recent President. But at the moment, there were so many commentators trying to jazz up the eclipse event but no one much could say about it other than that it was amazing. Schoolkids called in to comment did not even have canned science tidbits, only the excitement of it all, which seemed manufactured so as to be displayed as excited on the camera. Some people said the eclipse would bring us together in these divisive times but that.seems to me that is creating a false balance in that only the Republicans are being so divisive as to make Congress unmanageable and only their own leader had been an insurrectionist and claiming to reck vengeance and suspend the Constitution if he were again elected.
The cablecasters try for a day to hype up the eclipse, bringing in school children to tell what they have learned and not saying more than they were amazed for reasons they could not say, the adults around them also at a lack of words to explain its significance, just how pleased to be present at the moment and perhaps touched by our common humanity at a time of political discord. A commentator brought into jazz up the proceedings said he wasn’t a very religious man but was impressed by the enormity of it all, presumably gigantic forces at work over large distances, though he didn’t really say, just uttering a religious conventionality. That sort of puny religious invocation seemed lame, just a way to dredge up a conventional religiosity so as to make the event glorious but a bit odd to me because historically the discovery of the cosmos by Copernicus and Galileo were seen as threats to religion precisely because they made mankind small by comparison, just residents of one planet in a gigantic firmament. But religion is so weak today that only an inapt invocation is enough to do that business and distract people from events on our own planet.
Not me. There was a gathering of people at the Indy Speedway to congregate in celebration but if I were there the appropriate question would be why in that very red state people were willing to support an insurrectionist. Should the Constitution be overthrown or was the claim of an insurrection just fake news? I want to know. That is to me the key issue of our time, whether to suspend the Constitution, more important than an eclipse. But I must admit I don't ask that question of people in my own very red state of Utah. That would be impolite and politeness trumps politics. Let's get on with the trial.
The only thing to take away from the eclipse is that it was an event that was remarkably inconsequential and ephemeral. It won’t last even until the trial. It is less significant than a carousel or a circus or a walk in the park or preparing your garden in spring so as to plant tomatoes. All these events can cause comment, while talk about the eclipse was labored while it was happening, just time off from real events.