How appropriate to cite Matthew Arnold's great lament over "The Sea of Faith" and "It's melancholy, long-withdrawing roar" as it retreats "to the breath / Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear / And naked shingles of the world."

But I'm a Tennyson fan, myself:

Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Don't lose hope, Gerard.

More Tennyson, from a hundred and seventy-three years ago, to show that great artists are prophets, and to show humanity's greatest hope (in fact, in the long term, its only one):

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Well, it's waiting for us. Treasure beyond imagination and beyond count, only a hundred miles away. Unfortunately, straight up.

Obama and the NOI. Yikes!

Women of America feel let down by TK? Just remind them - Chappaquiddik and Mary-Jo! Now there was a gal who had cause to feel let down.

http://www.ytedk.com/chapter1.htm

Another take on the current competition between pygmies when giants are needed:

Oh, where are you coming from, soldier, fine soldier,
In your dandy new uniform, all spick and span,
With your helmeted head and the gun on your shoulder,
Where are you coming from, gallant young man?

I come from the war that was yesterday's trouble,
I come with the bullet still blunt in my breast;
Though long was the battle and bitter the struggle,
Yet I fought with the bravest, I fought with the best.

Oh, where are you coming from, soldier, tall, soldier,
With ray-gun and sun-bomb and everything new,
And a face that might well have been carved from a boulder,
Where are you coming from, now tell me true!

My harness is novel, my uniform other
Than any gay uniform people have seen,
Yet I am your future and I am your brother
And I am the battle that has not yet been.

Oh, where are you coming from, soldier, gaunt soldier,
With weapons beyond any reach of my mind,
With weapons so deadly the world must grow older
And die in its tracks, if it does not turn kind?

Stand out of my way and be silent before me!
For none shall come after me, foeman or friend,
Since the seed of your seed called me out to employ me,
And that was the longest, and that was the end.

This was written in the 1940s, before physicists knew sin. The worst is yet to come - and still the (pig)mies [sic.] argue about trivialities, with their snouts firmly jammed into the trough.

The 20th century was one of horrors. The 21st could be the last.