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We find ourself in the center of having to renew & rethink the great foundational insights & issues that fashioned the deep substrate of what is the values & philosophy of the American experiment.
Vigilance is the price of liberty. We have not properly done so for too long.
Vigilance is the price of liberty. We have not properly done so for too long.
So we find ourselves, again, in a deep split battle having to adjudicate who we are, again. The immensity of the effort is beginning to dawn on the country. It is strenuously being worked out in this bifurcating argument about impeachment or not.
I think the issues might be masked by that debate. That whatever happens there to dislodge this pestilence from the seat of power is necessary but will not address the deeper issues that we are actually working out.
Consider the distance between the states. Consider California grappling with the issues of climate, society, how to understand how to deal with so many difficult issues & Alabama whose focus seems to be a regressive turn back to the age of subjegation of women & the powerless.
The divides are as deep as they are historical. In some significant ways we, as a nation have been punting these issues to the next generation from the beginning. There was a Civil War that changes the landscape but did not completely settle the deepest issues of our existence.
The wounds have become open wounds again. Strange that such immense and consequential matters are being forced upon us, ready or not. And I suppose that is the question of the moment. Is the generation upon whom all this mayhem, conflict & intractable difficulty ready to
Take on the impossible task of dealing with all this? Troubles not of their making, but unfairly have become this generation’s responsibility. It seems there will be no more punting. Something imperative is in the air. I don't expect we will get thru this time unchanged.
But....changed into what? That much we do not know. And, it appears, is to be found out day after day. If there are historians in our future I suspect this time will be as rich and complex as any in our past. Founding. Slavery. Civil War. WW2. Industrialization of
Everything even when we had no idea what we were unleashing. Silent Spring. Civil Rights. Global climate change. Broken global financial systems. And now this : whatever this temptation to regress back to a time that never was.
That retreat has been done often enough. I don't think that is one of the choices now. To attempt it is to forget everything. To deny what is happening. So that seems the question that must be answered now: Will we, do we even know how, as a nation/people, fight for the
Future? Or just give it up.
