Understanding the Present
I’ve been wondering how our nation has gotten to the place that we now call “the present.” I don’t often read Frank Rich in The New York Times, but his article, “Freedom’s Just Another Word”, is a good explanation of the present. The fear profiteers are doing their part to make sure that the top 1% stay comfortable by making sure that everyone else is fighting amongst ourselves; and they are doing a good job though given the amount of grief and anxiety the fear profiteers don’t have to be to creative. Where are the voices of memory, shame, and leadership calling out those that would divide for the sake of power and wealth? Doesn’t it bother anyone else that the news media outlets are using religious adjectives to describe the type of “American” people are or are not. Does that sound like the nation you learned about in public school? Where is our Atticus Finch?
Freedom’s Just Another Word
by Frank Rich | The New York Times | September 4, 2010And yet here we are, slouching toward yet another 9/11 anniversary, still waiting for a correction, with even our president, an eloquent Iraq war opponent, slipping into denial. Of all the pro forma passages in Obama’s speech, perhaps the most jarring was his entreaty that Iraq’s leaders “move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative and accountable.” He might as well have been talking about the poisonous political deadlock in Washington. At that moment, there was no escaping the tragic fact that instead of bringing American-style democracy and freedom to Iraq, the costly war we fought there has, if anything, brought the bitter taste of Iraq’s dysfunction to America.