Thank you for your reply Durdle and Happy Thursday. Will we ever know how many black holes there are? Could there be infinite numbers of them? How do you quantify infinite?
Very large black holes, of which singularities and event horizons are part, are the mortal remains of extremely large but dead stars, and are believed to help hold galaxies together; and galaxies and their components are beautiful both simply to look at and to analyse.
Since when has a dying political party - of any persuasion or nationality - managed to hold anything major together or be worthy of so much admiration and analysis?
Good point Durdle. I was hoping there was something there that might matter. Something of value left in the detritus of what used to be the Grand Old Party, the GOP. It is very sad to watch though. As a Dem I am saddened by the the demise of a party that used to stand for something, mean something, matter. Of course I didn't agree with a lot of the views but I did admire many of those who held them. No longer. I don't admire those who have continued to support such a person as Trump. I only feel sorry for those who have distanced themselves and repudiated him. They are being attacked by Trump supporters when they should be honored/admired/applauded. A house divided cannot stand and it is falling rapidly like a very long row of dominoes or house of cards. That does not make me happy. I can only imagine what it is doing to the old-time Republicans who cannot seem to stop the bleeding out. Thank you for your reply! :)
Well, I am a foreigner from your point of view! I don't claim to understand American politics - despite the BBC fawning over the USA and bombarding us with the wretched insult-trading going on at the moment - and it's not for me to take sides there.
So I don't understand nick-names like "Grand Old Party". However, I do understand your sadness at seeing a long-established political party tearing itself apart. We have parallels in the UK, and it is not helped by reporting tending to highlight the internal divisions rather than what the party intends should it become the governing party.
Our politicians are sometimes their own worst enemies though. They do not go in for unedifying personal insults, but do waste a lot of time in interviews attacking their opponents' approach to particular social and political problems rather than stating how they would try to solve the problems. When not merely criticising the others' methods and policies, they tend to hide behind clichés and woolly statements of their own principles, often wrapped in highly dubious but very obvious propaganda, to fend off awkward questions like How Will You Do It? and How Will You Pay For It?.
Some commentators have observed a widespread malaise in Western politics generally, a widespread disaffection with the "mainstream" parties and politicians.
Some of it is a perception that the politicians have lost sight of what they are supposed to do - administer their countries for the benefit of their citizens.
Some is a feeling of lost democratic accountability and control - hence the rise of anti-EU parties like the UK Independence Party and its brethren in other EU states. (NB: These EXCLUDE the noisy "Far Right" extremists who do attract followers but raise very uncomfortable reminders of Fascism and Nazism).
Still more of the disaffection is from actual or perceived corruption or socially unhealthy attitudes like racism - though it's often hard to disentangle what the accused really said from what his or her opponents want us to think was said. And sometimes, what the particular news services tell us was said: they often avoid lying but still trap the unwary speaker by carefully omitting qualifying remarks.
For a UK example, you may have heard of the alleged "rivers of blood" speech warning [of possible race riots] by the British MP Enoch Powell in the early 1970s, I think it was. The phrase, context and acknowledgement have been misreported and misquoted against him ever since. The facts are that he'd not invented the phrase, he had quoted a local constituent's fear expressed to him, and he was no racist; but these have been so carefully omitted by opponents, both politicians and journalists since that everyone assumes the accusation must as "true" as the "unsinkable Titanic" claim - and that is a classic myth by misquote if ever there was one!
On top of this mess, perhaps many are simply fed-up with politics and politicians thanks to the "media" bathing us in torrents of breathless, so-called "breaking", supposedly- "important" news, analysis and worse, views on all the latest twists and turns of this, that or other politician, campaign or debate. I blame the artificially-claimed but probably only supposed "demand" for "instant", 24-hour news coverage of personalities, because that leaves precious little opportunity for genuine thought and analysis of those personalities' real aims and abilities in what really matters.
In the end, no-one wins - not the poor voter left uncertain who best will run his or her country, not the politician and his or her own political party, not the nation or its administrative division, and certainly not democracy.
Durdle 