If you look at our current political situation from one of the other eleven planets, Ceres, perhaps, that soon-to-be former planetoid between Mars and Jupiter, our situation begins to make some kind of perverse sense. We need the distance and perspective.I chose Ceres not because it is named for the goddess of cereal or harvest ceremonies, but because it is spherical, orbits the sun, and next week may become one of the major planets of our solar system, despite the fact that it is really only the largest of the planetoids, very much smaller than our moon, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence, if our moon is the size of this letter O. Not really in the same league with moons much less planets, you see. In the midst of the world teetering on the edge of a full-fledged conflagration in the middle east, astronomers are arguing about whether Pluto is a planet and probably will keep it, despite the NYT advice to the contrary, thus promoting Ceres and some big iceballs out past Pluto to the status of planets. Redefining Ceres is just one of the latest examples of grown men and women redefining stuff to suit their fancies, rather than the facts. It is part and parcel of the pervasive, pathological TRUTHLESSNESS of our times.
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