Do We Know Each Other?

November 20, 2017

I know you.  Do you know me? 

If objective studies and empirical data are to be believed, no.  We are divided in ways and to a degree not observed in modern U.S. history.  We are separated into vast rural heartlands and compact urban cores, with scant opportunity to interact.  And while geographic location has become the leading indicator of political preference, we nevertheless hurl derision at our fellow Americans as if we actually understand one another, simply accepting, prima facie, the chronically negative viewpoints our chosen pundits continually push on us.  Does geography itself produce this political gulf, or does it just enable us to more easily segregate ourselves into opposing tribes?

So, is that what this is all really about?  Where we live?

The inaccuracy of the regrettable caricatures we paint of each another almost goes without saying.  But red states, here’s the reality: we’re right there with you.  Recent studies show that blue urban cores really do live the values the red heartlands so rightly and so often preach.  The annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey finds that blue states have a lower incidence rate of teen pregnancy.  They have comparatively low rates of divorce, of prostitution, and according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, of opioid addiction as well.  Metropolitan areas, with their hard-working and productive populations, also contribute the majority of federal tax receipts, from which all benefit – red and blue states together.  Our widespread animosity toward one another may therefore be misplaced, as these data stand in stark contrast to popular rightward narratives about the welfare-riven and dystopian dens of iniquity that are our metropolitan regions.  But amidst the bright cold light these numbers shed on the fallacy of such storylines, none of us – unyielding as we are – seem to need much convincing of their veracity; a Pew Research study finds that we all believe the opposing tribe is an actual threat to our nation’s well-being.

The presumption of malice so rampant today among geographically disparate Americans is understandable.  Absent any substantive contact with one another, any daily interaction, even the occasional friendly conversation over a white picket fence, we can only accept the information we are fed.  How are we to know if it’s all a steady stream of contrived misinformation… especially if we also harbor an intractable mistrust and/or hatred of anyone and anything that is not of our tribe?  There are but two options remaining, then: either we moderate our course and attempt to seek mutual understanding once more, or our country and its system of government will eventually come apart, willfully dismantled and destroyed from within.  And I do not doubt for a moment there exists a minority percentage for whom this latter option is preferred.

For the rest of us, it is time to correct our course.  It is time to stop these insipid and tribalistic culture wars which allow our elected officials to distract attention from our myriad looming challenges and get away without really governing.  These capricious individuals are unworthy of the somber responsibility we have handed them, and it’s our fault.  But neither business nor government are inherently evil.  Neither Republicans nor Democrats seek to destroy America.  Says Nicholas Kristof in his recent New York Times article on these comparative measures of red and blue, “let’s drop the wars over family values… liberals and conservatives alike don’t want kids pregnant at 16, and we almost all seek committed marriages that last.”  Most of what separates us is simple geography.  To my red state friends, I say this: the reality of life in and among the opposing tribe is demonstrably different than what you and many more across this country are being told, and far closer to our shared values and principles than you imagine.  I’m a product of the red states.  And I’m also a proud Southerner, happily ensconced in a big blue city, embraced by my neighbors, safe in our Norman Rockwell-esque community, warmly supported in my Christian faith. 

Am I to be believed, or not?  Will these empirical, observable facts be accepted?  Will you acknowledge what I am saying?  If so, what does that speak about all of the “real news” commentary to the contrary?  It is unclear whether anyone out there in the heartland is truly listening, or whether they will believe people like me or the hot-house radio and TV news pundits screaming conspiracy theories at them, day after day, red-faced and angry. 

When history is written, what part will you have played?  Where will you have been?  Watching the pitchfork-laden and torchlit mob, hell-bent on some final apocalyptic clash?  Or standing above it, arms locked with your fellow citizens, proclaiming “Stop!”? 

The ink is not yet dry.

I Am Not Your Enemy

November 2, 2017

I am not your enemy.  We are probably much alike; hitting the alarm, making breakfast, navigating the school drop-off line, trying not to spill the thermos of coffee, pondering how much yard work awaits this weekend.  And I grew up in a small town, though I make my life in a big city.  They are both America.  I love my neighbors back home, as well as those around me here, now, though they are far apart from one another in so many ways.  But they are all Americans.  What we want is not that different – not in any meaningful way.  We all want a good life for ourselves and our families.  We all want better opportunity for our children.  We want to get what we pay for, and not to worry too much about losing our health and well-being.  We want safety.  We want to grow old with dignity, surrounded by those we love.  These are not partisan positions, and all that truly separates us are the finer points of how we achieve these common ends, together. 

I am not your enemy.  We may have cast our votes differently, but that does not mean we must hate one another.  It does not mean I hate our country, nor our system of government.  I am not your enemy.  I am your advocate.  I am your brother.  My vote is always cast in support of you, of your right to these things for which we all strive together, of your right to express your beliefs and to speak your mind, whatever that may be.  You may not believe my vote was cast for the best candidate to shepherd us on to our sunlit uplands, but never doubt that it was cast in good faith and for our common benefit and purpose. 

I am not your enemy.  You are being told otherwise.  But those who tell you otherwise know better, and their purpose is not the future we hope to share.  Their goal is instead to divide us, to profit from our anger, to gain power and position, and to use that position to build their own lives and fortunes.  They are both domestic and foreign, both seen and unseen.  They are telling you that what you hear them say, from their very lips, is not what you hear, and what you see with your own eyes is not what you see, and in time, you have come to believe them.  But because they are free from the work-a-day constraints of their followers, and of the rest of us, you must recognize that they can live anywhere, do most anything, and have no particular allegiance to you nor to me, nor to the prosperity of our nation and its people, nor even to our flag.  No, they live above the daily fray of American life and struggle the rest of us must endure, all the while turning us against one another.  And drunk with the emotional highs of the anger and outrage they have poured down our throats, we blindly and unwittingly do their bidding, tearing down no one but ourselves.  Nations pursuing enemies within will inevitably implode.

I am not your enemy.  Your true enemies are inflaming your resentments, stoking your fear and anger, and turning you against your fellow Americans.  But I am not your enemy.  I am your friend.  As are many, many millions more.

On the Character of Our Founders

October 27, 2017

The revered pages of our nation’s history are notably absent boastful demagogues and political agitators. Joseph Reed, secretary and aid-de-camp to General George Washington, wrote in 1776, “When I look around, and see how few of the numbers who talked so largely of death and honor are around me, and that those who are here are those from whom it was least expected… I am lost in wonder and surprise… Your noisy sons of liberty are, I find, the quietest in the field… An engagement, or even the expectation of one, gives wonderful insight into character.” 

Those from whom it was least expected. 

What a lesson.  While the sum of our own years should suffice to make clear that talk and action usually enjoy an inverse proportionality, history provides us ample demonstration of that all-too-frequent relationship.  Most of us were taught to be wary of braggarts, your “noisy sons of liberty” who loudly profess their skill and piety, and have learned with time that the truly capable have little need to advertise it.  The lesson of that flag, resplendent and red?  What is promised never comes. 

Washington thought extremely well of Reed.  As a young Philadelphia attorney, he became known for his deft intellect and honorable moral courage, both qualities Washington would find indispensable in keeping the man at his side; and indeed, those with whom we surround ourselves speaks plainly to our own character.  Reed’s admirable combination of humility and quiet confidence was never more fully on display than when he was offered £10,000 by the British crown to promote reconciliation with the late colonies.  He replied simply, "I am not worth purchasing; but, such as I am, the King of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it."  

Where are such Americans of character today?  They have stood before us and humbly asked to serve, and with no small measure of regret we will recall their rejection.

The Impact of One Man

October 3, 2017

One man can change a country. History is replete with personalities who shaped the course of their nations; some are venerated, others are not. But its citizens must allow it – the will of one individual is insufficient to move an unwilling populace. Our leaders often reflect the best in us, yet when they do not, the prices are steep and stain the pages of history. There have been those who sought to divide, and there have been those, who when presented with abject division, sought to heal.

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same”, once penned a famous South African. Our light, when shining from above, both illuminates our way and beckons to others; what happens when that luminosity is gone? When we submit to our darker instincts? The shadows cast insidiously spread, odious and infectious, and without our path alight, we stumble, blind, increasingly fearful. Who willingly walks such a way? What forces convince us to close our eyes in submission, instead of opening them in cognizance of what lies ahead?

While we may not recall the specific words our elders and our teachers employed, we all remember the lessons they taught: be kind to others, especially lesser of us. Choose your words carefully – they matter, and cannot be easily undone. And if you speak, know what you’re talking about. Never lie, cheat, or steal; for some of us in school, such offence could change the very course of our lives. Leadership is service, an honor to be accepted with magnanimity and humility. Finally, at the end, all you have is your character. Everything else is fleeting and falls away. This is what will be remembered, that will be who you were.

Our inspiration for this essay left us with this, too, of course: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Weapons we do not lack; but while battles are won with guns, wars are won with ideas. If all of the qualities of character are manifest in anything, it is the erudition and circumspection we practice and project. Knowledge and comprehension are truth, and truth is light. Without the capacity to understand the history of man, the natural forces that shape our planet, the boundaries of thought and what may stir beyond them, we cannot tell leaf from tree; we are vapid and brutish, our existence serving little purpose but the spilling of blood and the churning of soil. 

We all know what constitutes character. We have all been taught from a young age that true strength and courage comes from a deep commitment to service and to fellow man. And we all understand that the pillars of history were honorable souls, practiced in intellect, charitable in spirit, equitable in governance. Gallant in war, and benevolent in peace. How will history remember us, as a nation? How will it remember you? Our better angels are watching.

The Extent of Liberty

September 24, 2017

As a white male, it is difficult for me to lecture anyone on whether or not they’re feeling oppressed. And there is little shortage of opinion on the matter today. The near ubiquity of our view, however, to the realities of life for many paints in stark relief how arbitrarily fortunate some of us are, and so weighs a responsibility upon us to stand for those who cannot rise themselves. We should all value a nation where these conversations are possible – at least for the moment. In the words of a prescient founding father, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it." Indeed. And so I’ll gratefully bow my head and bend my knee to our Lord and to our country, and nothing else. God bless America.

The Duty and Honor of Service

August 13, 2017

Intellectual dishonesty is the affliction of our age.  Manifest in willful ignorance and skilled subterfuge, it pervades our national discourse in ways unimaginable not so many years ago.  Flames spawn denunciations of firemen.  Evil on full display in the town square yields but an icy silence.  Assaults on our democratic norms and constitutional tenets, so recently ginned up and popularly decried, are ignored and even embraced, the sole difference now color and tribe.

People in power have rarely gone quietly.  What unfolds before us today is no struggle of worthy opponents; that is false equivalency.  It is instead of merit and menace, and it is existential.  A nation of ideas and achievement, should it yield, will become one of blood and soil, marked not by progress but immobility.  Who and what then will build our cities, improve our crops, cure our diseases, advance our technologies, and one day take us back to the heavens? 

The America I knew was one of serious men and women.  There was a nobility in public service, and an aspiration to higher mind and spirit; expertise was honored, professionalism desired, and truth had a heedful ear.  Ours was not a nation of bluff and bluster.  Serious adults looked down on such unseemly behavior, for it revealed an absence of both strength and character.  Members of the Greatest Generation did not talk about their sacrifice nor brag of their service; the horrors they witnessed and the burdens they bore were the real measure of their duty, the stability and prosperity of the country they defended and to which they returned told their story, and they recognized chicanery when they saw it.  How did we forget? 

Harry S. Truman wrote that “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”  And while our 33^rd President of the United States was a product of his time just like any other, David McCullough writes, “Yet here is the man who initiated the first civil rights message ever and ordered the armed services desegregated.... When friends and advisers warned him that he was certain to lose the election in 1948 if he persisted with his civil rights program, he said if he lost for that, it would be a good cause. Principle mattered more than his own political hide.”  Truman faced crises not of his own making, and unlike anything our nation had stared down before.  Today we face demons of our own, created for political expediency and personal gain, made all the more dangerous because they are born of ourselves – of our worst instincts, our worst fears.  Today, our enemy exists within.  And all that stands between us and victory is our mutual willingness to recognize it.

We all know what is right, admit it or not.  It is as plain as anything has ever been.  We learned these things, together, from a very young age: duty, honor, kindness.  Listening, and learning.  Love of country and care of fellow man.  We must place these principles and aspirations back upon the hill our forbearers built for them before we no longer possess the strength nor will to climb it. 

Our National Embrace of Ignorance

July 27, 2017

Statesmanship has been scuttled.  Forensics is dead.  Once the realm of the erudite few, and the aspiration of the many, these lie in ashes, vanquished by angry multitudes chafing at the restraints of dignity and grace.  There’s a strategy behind this wreckage of intellect and reason – years of unrelenting assault on comity – and there’s a tactic – the disparaging of one’s opponents, denigration of their arguments and sources, and a tu quoque assault, leaving adversaries bewildered, spinning, unbalanced and unable to answer such specious spew for the dispiriting realization of futility in engagement.  We’ve been subjected to this centerpiece of punditry and politics for so long now it’s woven into the very fabric of our discourse, if we may even still ascribe the term to such theatrical and artificial cloth.  

Where does this leave the foundations of our democracy?  Stone is a particularly recalcitrant rival and we have bred a Medusa of the masses, a rock-solid and willfully self-destructive base, heels dug and blindly loyal.  What of compromise?  What of collaboration?  What of circumspection?  Of years of study and reflection?  These are no longer for men, not for real patriots, and as opposing forces (both human and natural) assiduously assemble for their looming assault upon us, we stand defiant, beating our chests and proclaiming the prowess of our forefathers long dead, their crumbling battlements and rusting towers of achievement beneath our unworthy feet, our childishly hollow boasts and chronic disparagement now the satire of distant shores.

Not unable, but unwilling to see what is before us, our nation careens toward the cliff edge, off-course and drunk with anger at imagined slights and chimeric internal foes; nightly awaiting our familiar town criers to usher us in from the encroaching darkness to the perceived safety of our tribal homes.  And if it is indeed all we have left, we must put our faith in its inevitable destruction.  In the destruction of parties.  Of institutions.  Of the trust in fear and solace of emotion on which our electorally enshrined tyrannical land mass has come to rely.  Perhaps only in the rebuilding the intellectual foundations of our republic (if we can keep it) can we find deliverance – only in the dispassionate embrace of mastered art, of skilled science, of lauded logic and common fact, of objective thought and shared reason – only in these things can we recraft a society worthy of those who sacrificed so much to grant us that which we have upbuilt, exercised, eschewed, and now jettisoned to the gutter of our history.  

Raison d'être

July 2, 2017

We do not celebrate our patriotism this week. No, we celebrate our independence. Independence is not a feeling, nor a love of something familiar. It is not the flying of colors, nor loud proclamations, nor beating of chests. It is instead quiet courage. It is fearsome capability. It is unrelenting resolve. And it is the will to stand up for what is right, not what is popular. Independence neither submits to the authority of another, nor bows to any aggressor. Two hundred forty-one years ago today, the Second Continental Congress voted at Philadelphia to adopt Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for our independence from Great Britain. It did so remembering why we came to this place – to escape religious persecution, to be free of economic ills, and to chart our own course for ourselves and our families – paying dearly with blood and toil for what we held to be our inalienable rights. Those rights trampled, we paid once more to rescue them, and in so doing demonstrated to the world that a new form of government based upon a shared compact of ideas was possible. When over a century later America came to the rescue of that world, she did so with a humble and reluctant strength, sharp intellect, steely determination, and with the overwhelming power and might of all her resources, both natural and human.

Let none of us forget that when tyrants rant and shout, America does not listen. That when rulers pull their citizens into darkness, America does not follow. That when the worst instincts of man crawl forth, America pushes them back. For without our constitution and fortitude, we are nothing. We are not of this land – no, we have simply bestowed it with a higher purpose – and are thus stewards of it and of that for which it stands – independent, benevolent, and hopeful for a future worthy of the resolute intellects and indomitable spirits of our founding fathers, who like angels in the whirlwind, imbued us with God’s grace, bounty, and obligation.

This week, we celebrate our independence. A Happy Fourth to all.

A More Perfect Union

June 15, 2017

Anger is a deliciously satisfying emotion, an easy high and best when shared. Americans share it well. For years we have engorged ourselves while our politicians and pundits have slopped us with it in troughs, as we slurp, our righteous indignation running down our chins and over our bellies, swollen with hatred and contempt. We have discovered our drug and lost ourselves, viewing our fellow citizens – the source of our strength and sustenance of our nation – as our enemies and those of the State and Party, to which we now bow prostrate, cravenly pledging obsequious fealty to the end. 

This is not America. Americans bow to no one. To no individual. Americans stand together, united, in singular service to an ideal – our Constitution – and in the defense of those rights and freedoms granted, and of those who cannot fight for themselves. In America, the end does not justify the means; rather, the means are the end itself, and shape that end, for if we uphold our laws, guided by our constitutional tenets, we form a more perfect union together – one that is consistent, predictable, stable, and trustworthy to the end. The path on which we set ourselves in recent years carries us instead to a place from which return is uncertain at best and historically catastrophic at worst. We must all stop, listen, and recall that time in America when we disagreed without hate, compromised without derision, and collaborated for the betterment of all. We did. Your parents did. You did. We can do it once more, if only we reclaim the strength of character and resolve to be the first among us to stand. 

Will you?

Vulnerability’s End

April 11, 2017

Listened to a radio program about Jim Jones and the events in Guyana nearly 40 years on. This man’s path to extinguishing almost a thousand lives, many willing and complicit, is at once darkly fascinating and frighteningly felicitous: a demagogue convinces his followers that he is the only answer; that he alone represents a greater good. That the cause is larger than just one man, bestowing a sense of morality on his loyal following. This great force of personality needn’t possess understanding of process nor of governance, only of psychology. He is a master of mental gymnastics, and will induce the flock to look past his obvious faults and naked transgressions, persuading them that criticism of him is indeed criticism of the movement itself. Your enemy, once an external force, becomes your neighbor. And you believe him. He prays upon the disadvantaged, exploiting intrinsic and chronic vulnerabilities to chimeric promises. He knows that if he can keep them poor and hungry, clinging to hope, they'll continue to need and support him. But as with Jonestown, the charade always comes to an end. And it never ends well.

When America was Great

March 21, 2017

George Washington viewed swagger as a moral failing. He served reluctantly and humbly, and redefined statesmanship in quietly passing the baton of leadership to John Adams. Was that when we were great? Abraham Lincoln once called forth the better angels of our nature, while Teddy Roosevelt admonished the nation to speak softly, and to carry a big stick, the New World eventually rising up and coming forth to the rescue of the Old, as Winston Churchill so eloquently stated. Was that when we were great? We had a dream, once, and crossed that Southern bridge together to finally stand equal with all our brothers and sisters. Was that when we were great? We poured our resources and intellect into research and innovation once, and stood like giants aloft heavenly soil. Was that when we were great? We brought the world closer together, and fostered a web of community interconnected and unparalleled among the pages of history. Was that when we were great? We did these things, in the words of a statesman whose measure seems so far beyond our own today, not because they were easy, but because they were hard. Not only for ourselves, but for all mankind. God grant us the strength of purpose and fortitude of character once again to remember who we are as a nation, and to recapture our hard-won legacy before it slips its fragile bonds forever.

What we Fear is Us

February 28, 2017

When negotiating a traffic circle, the idea is not to bisect the circle at high speed. Rather, these circles enable vehicular traffic to flow efficiently and harmoniously, where drivers enter in turns and navigate the lanes using mirrors, signals, and a dose of civility. For my friends in DC who travel Chevy Chase Circle, we understand too well that this latter description can fail utterly.

And that’s really an apt metaphor for today’s United States, isn’t it? We’re no longer working in concert with others; no, by contrast we’re charging angrily into the circle, cutting through the lanes, sowing risk and spreading destruction in our wake. Everyone else be damned. So, for all those well-meaning and nostalgic individuals who say, “this isn’t America” … let’s labor no more under such delusions: this is who we are as a country. This is us. We’re going to try being the bullies on the block for a while, and see what that feels like. Are you ready?

As an historian recently (and wrongfully) detained at an airport so aptly put it, “We must now face arbitrariness and incompetence at every level.” Ever looked down your nose at those banana republics and their graft-ridden low-level apparatchiks? Well take a look in the mirror. Do you enjoy the freedom to say what you want, and be what you want, without the fear and reprisals with which other populations must contend? Better start watching your back. You should also get used to violence and intimidation against religious minorities; we see more of it with each passing day. Get used to people who are in this country legally now fleeing across the northern border (illegally) just to escape you. YOU. Get used to well-educated and economically additive immigrants choosing to leave the United States, or instead to never come here at all but to go elsewhere, and make those countries wealthier and more powerful – not us. For those of you that took the course, we’re going to try tossing macroeconomics out the window, and see how that goes. Let’s all slam the doors and throw up tariffs and walls and all of those things we’d once consigned to the trash heap of fiscal experimentation. Can we fix it? Perhaps, if it isn’t already too late, but that will take a lot more effort than we’ve shown ourselves willing to give.

So together we have a front seat view now of just how little is required to dramatically alter a nation’s climate to one of fear and intimidation, and to let loose the less savory and more violent instincts of what psychologists will tell you is a larger part of the population than you probably wish to imagine. How much fun that will be, for all of us. Oh, what a small number of words from a powerful set of lips can unleash, like a few crooked stones in the Oroville spillway. Before us now is a farcical tyranny of the masses, tossing gasoline on a fire in a desperate last act of irrationality and recklessness.

But the thing about burning down the house is, my friends – you’ve got to be prepared to stand in a pile of ashes. Ever sneered at those other countries which lacked our social, political, and economic stability, or maintained our professional and civil standards? Our long-standing religious rights and protections? You’ve got to be prepared to lose those rights, privileges, services, predictabilities, and opportunities you’ve come to expect (and perhaps never even really considered), as they were built on the very foundations you just torched. Have you enjoyed the comfort and peace of mind that comes with being the adult among nations? Say goodbye to the prestige you once carried, the doors held open, the elevated pathways afforded you.

Welcome to your Brave New World, America.

Our Intellectual Crisis

February 11, 2017

Many of you have expressed exasperation with political posts. OK – you’re not alone. This morning, I poured my coffee and turned to MSNBC. Reporting from Tehran indicated that while the demonstrations included some typical anti-U.S. rhetoric, there was a notable reduction this year in the number of burning American flags, and many demonstrators expressed solidarity with protesters of the current administration. There were pictures, of course, and this all seemed believable. I turned to FOX. The story line was of a belligerent display, that there were shouts everywhere of “death to America”, and presented to the viewer a picture of a U.S. flag aflame. Clearly this was also quite believable, as it’s the Tehran we've come to know and follows years of the same. So, what do we take away? Who is correct… and is there even a single “correct” here?

What did I take away from this morning’s news? Well, yes, our old adversaries in Iran are still there and must be managed, and they’re still aiming both invective and policy our way. But also that the populace itself may actually hold a more nuanced and shifting view of our country and its inhabitants, and that this divergence might present some kind of opening in the future if properly exploited and leveraged.

The larger point, perhaps, is this: if we are to return to civility in discourse, to thoughtful discussion, we must recognize the difference between opinion and fact. Between feeling and spin, and objective reality. You’re entitled to your feelings and opinions. They’re of course more compelling when fact and evidence-based. You are not entitled to your own versions of facts; these are simply obstructionist opinion. That a thing may fit a chosen narrative does not in itself bestow merit. And while that’s sometimes discomforting, the truly strong, substantive personality and mind is equipped to understand it and to adapt. If we were on the ground, there amongst the demonstrators, that would be rather direct evidence and basis for a fairly concrete stance. Were we, however, to have established a perspective based upon viewing only one of these news outlets, we’d have limited our impression of today’s events. Perhaps we'd now hold a less-informed perspective. Having not been there, of course, we must consult multiple sources to build a more circumspect opinion. And even then… it being indirect evidence… we must concede to not being primary sources and thus should be open to listening, to consulting other sources of information, and to conducting objective discussion – especially with those (should we be so fortunate) who are direct sources, and have studied or participated in the topic at hand.

Our country is in the grips of an intellectual crisis long in the making. I cannot possibly enumerate all of the causes and contributors here in this post. But unless and until we recognize the difference between what we wish or assume to be true, based upon narrow and indirect sources, versus demonstrable fact through direct evidence or at the very least based upon a broad survey of credible indirect sources, we will continue to follow an unsustainable path of division and discord of our own creation.

Oh, and these are Mr. Jefferson’s Books, Library of Congress.

How Big is Your Bubble?

December 15, 2016

It's incumbent upon all of us not to dismiss out of hand information that conflicts with our established views. If you bristle when people unfairly cry "racist" every time they hear the word Republican, just imagine what it's like for Democrats to hear "America-hating communist" every time they’re mentioned. That's pretty much what I've witnessed for years now. We’re better than that, aren’t we? Hatred and animosity are amplified in echo chambers; it’s easy to dismiss (and even to hate) people and things with which you don’t often interact. Especially when others around you are constantly shouting that they’re the problem…. and that is neither a totally red nor blue statement. This chart should give all of us pause. (and please do not dismiss it because it’s from MIT...)

Winter has Come

November 19, 2016

Winter has come for the greater generations; we've only these monuments to our better angels now. They elevated knowledge, while we suborn it to emotion. They remained calm under fire, while we burn with hair-trigger outrage. Their humility and quiet actions spoke of their character; our hollow and sanctimonious bellicosity belies our own. We're no longer the people we once were, nor those we so loudly profess to be. But while these stone memorials to discarded ideals remain, I will enjoy them and share them with you on this beautiful fall day, in rapidly fading hopes for our return to worthiness of their provenance.