a quick response to recent events:
IN RECENT DAYS, THE PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL HAS NOW SPOKEN TO CONGRESS...
IN RECENT DAYS, THE PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL HAS NOW SPOKEN TO CONGRESS...
AND FORTY-SEVEN SENATORS HAVE SENT A LETTER TO IRAN, WHICH HAPPENED to be spearheaded by a newly elected Senator from Arkansas by the name of Tom Cotton, who had just received $l million dollars from William Krystol's Emergency Fund for Israel and prompted a quick reply from the Supreme Leader of Iran informing Senator Cotton that he needed a refresher course in the Proper Procedures of .American Congressional Law, particularly went came to the unwanted and unasked for tinkering around in foreign affairs. All of which happened to be done behind the President's back in the name of democracy, but were nothing more than an attempt an attempt to sabotage democratic freedom in foreign affairs, solely designed with the intent of making the President of the United States look foolish because he happened to black. In the wider game of political society, the principles of conflict ran rampant, the goal of harmony became a thing of the past. The goal was dominance: to take no prisoners, and, in Murray Kempton's phrase, shoot the wounded became the norm. The unraveling process can have many names: fragmentation, disintegration - but the truth is nothing more that stagnant racism perpetrated at the onset of the President's ascent to office by a Kentucky Senator by the name of Mitch McConnell and aided by a Congressman from Ohio by the name of John Boehner.
All of this was backed-up, of course, by the ever-present and always grumpy Senator from Arizona, John McCain, whose ferocious logic of the adjective insists that the only solution for world affairs is not negotiation but the declaration of war. In the America of these three men, it seems always to be the shedding of flesh and blood, Us against Them. Our side must be in conflict with Their side. It's not enough to be an American; you must despise, diminish, and empty the guts of those others Americans who are not like y0u. Every smashed bone and dashed hope of others do not matter. The result is that we have become a society in apparently permanent, teeming, nerve-fraying conflict: blacks against whites, straights against gays, gays against priests, priests against abortionists; sun people against ice people; Latinos against Anglos; folks who work against those who don't; cops against innocent black kids; political hacks against the rights of women; and the Supreme Court aiding-and-abetting Voter Suppression.
But there are also additional confusions. The most rigid advocates of this form of hyphen aren't really talking about the multiple, the plural, or about the natural human movement toward synthesis and reconciliation. They do not want to add to the fund of individual knowledge or international negotiation. Thy are insisting upon indoctrinating the replacement of the many with the singular. There is only one road to salvation - and they know what it is. Simply put: it is segregation of the mind. It is also a fraud. They prefer violence to talk. War to peace. Lies to the truth. The point of all this sound and fury is fragmentation. Conflict is all. The apocalyptic demand is for alteration of the past and allow them to guide us into the unknown future. One now seething in bitterness over a President of a different color other than their own.
One-upon-a-time we created the twentieth-century American political style. The most effective politicians - Sam Rayburn ,Everett Dirksen, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Taft - employed basic courtesy in dealing with their opponents. They disagreed on many things. They were capable of immense vanity. They knew in the end, politics was about power. But they did not think it necessary to destroy the enemy. The enemy was over there: Hitler, Tojo, Stalin. Those who swung the broadswords at other Americans - the Joe Mcarthys, the Bilos and Eastlands - accomplished nothing. They were cheap, vulgar men - ignorant, parochial, and cynical. They never rose to higher office because the American people would not have them. The tougher men and women who truly changed the world, who moved it along, made it better, did so with a clarity of vision and a certain amount of grace. They were always willing to settle for half a loaf. And they each in their own way did think about what was best for the country. They were, after all, Americans before they were Ohioans or Kentuckians or Democrats or Republicans. They respected the contract. They respected the presidency...
...And they have now been replaced by professional cynics filled with bitterness. The reason? There happens to be a black man in the White House...
All of this was backed-up, of course, by the ever-present and always grumpy Senator from Arizona, John McCain, whose ferocious logic of the adjective insists that the only solution for world affairs is not negotiation but the declaration of war. In the America of these three men, it seems always to be the shedding of flesh and blood, Us against Them. Our side must be in conflict with Their side. It's not enough to be an American; you must despise, diminish, and empty the guts of those others Americans who are not like y0u. Every smashed bone and dashed hope of others do not matter. The result is that we have become a society in apparently permanent, teeming, nerve-fraying conflict: blacks against whites, straights against gays, gays against priests, priests against abortionists; sun people against ice people; Latinos against Anglos; folks who work against those who don't; cops against innocent black kids; political hacks against the rights of women; and the Supreme Court aiding-and-abetting Voter Suppression.
But there are also additional confusions. The most rigid advocates of this form of hyphen aren't really talking about the multiple, the plural, or about the natural human movement toward synthesis and reconciliation. They do not want to add to the fund of individual knowledge or international negotiation. Thy are insisting upon indoctrinating the replacement of the many with the singular. There is only one road to salvation - and they know what it is. Simply put: it is segregation of the mind. It is also a fraud. They prefer violence to talk. War to peace. Lies to the truth. The point of all this sound and fury is fragmentation. Conflict is all. The apocalyptic demand is for alteration of the past and allow them to guide us into the unknown future. One now seething in bitterness over a President of a different color other than their own.
One-upon-a-time we created the twentieth-century American political style. The most effective politicians - Sam Rayburn ,Everett Dirksen, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Taft - employed basic courtesy in dealing with their opponents. They disagreed on many things. They were capable of immense vanity. They knew in the end, politics was about power. But they did not think it necessary to destroy the enemy. The enemy was over there: Hitler, Tojo, Stalin. Those who swung the broadswords at other Americans - the Joe Mcarthys, the Bilos and Eastlands - accomplished nothing. They were cheap, vulgar men - ignorant, parochial, and cynical. They never rose to higher office because the American people would not have them. The tougher men and women who truly changed the world, who moved it along, made it better, did so with a clarity of vision and a certain amount of grace. They were always willing to settle for half a loaf. And they each in their own way did think about what was best for the country. They were, after all, Americans before they were Ohioans or Kentuckians or Democrats or Republicans. They respected the contract. They respected the presidency...
...And they have now been replaced by professional cynics filled with bitterness. The reason? There happens to be a black man in the White House...
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