Don't get me wrong, I have not one single positive thing to say about the current administration in this country at the moment. I think the assault on civil rights which has been going on for 20 years is being accelerated at a terrifying rate. But.........both my hope and my fear lie not with the administrations, which come and go, but with the people as a whole.
Americans are both the best and the worst. We stick out our necks all over the place...or is it that we butt into everyone's business? We're tolerant and intolerant. We are so very many contradictory things.
My hope lies in the best in people; in the fact that we've become SO accustomed to freedom that I think truly giving it up will cause a revolt. My terror and my pity rests in what we have become: a population that lets itself be pandered to, be bought with ridiculously cheap tax-cuts that cost us so much more in the no-so-long run; a population with eroding value in education, altruism, the social contract, and any other values which aren't solely based in so-called Christian morality (which itself is so full of contradictory intolerance I don't know why it doesn't implode) and an growing and utter laziness that would seem so totally at odds with a society which was founded on the Protestant work ethic as to be almost unimaginable.
I hope what is and always has been positive in us as Americans will out over the baser aspects of our current society, keeping us valuing our freedom enough to make the necessary sacrifices needed in the future to protect it, to protect all that is good about the American way of life.
Am I just fooling myself? I've never thought of myself as an idealist.
"My hope lies in the best in people; in the fact that we've become SO accustomed to freedom that I think truly giving it up will cause a revolt."
But as you noted, the erosion of our rights has been going on a lot longer than just this administration. I fear we're acting like the frog being slowly boiled alive, never noticing how hot the water has gotten until it's too late to jump out.
"My terror and my pity rests in what we have become: a population that lets itself be pandered to, be bought with ridiculously cheap tax-cuts that cost us so much more in the no-so-long run"
Somewhere I've got a quote stashed away that I hadn't decided whether to use or not, I think it's from Benjamin Franklin, about how once the populace realizes it can vote itself money, that's the end of the republic.
You're being an idealist (I should know how to recognize one by now, since I'm called that all the time). I hope you're right. I fear you're not. I don't think we can afford to wait and see based on that hope, because the stakes are so high and it's so hard to see the threshold until long after we've crossed it.
(no subject)
Americans are both the best and the worst. We stick out our necks all over the place...or is it that we butt into everyone's business? We're tolerant and intolerant. We are so very many contradictory things.
My hope lies in the best in people; in the fact that we've become SO accustomed to freedom that I think truly giving it up will cause a revolt.
My terror and my pity rests in what we have become: a population that lets itself be pandered to, be bought with ridiculously cheap tax-cuts that cost us so much more in the no-so-long run; a population with eroding value in education, altruism, the social contract, and any other values which aren't solely based in so-called Christian morality (which itself is so full of contradictory intolerance I don't know why it doesn't implode) and an growing and utter laziness that would seem so totally at odds with a society which was founded on the Protestant work ethic as to be almost unimaginable.
I hope what is and always has been positive in us as Americans will out over the baser aspects of our current society, keeping us valuing our freedom enough to make the necessary sacrifices needed in the future to protect it, to protect all that is good about the American way of life.
Am I just fooling myself? I've never thought of myself as an idealist.
(no subject)
But as you noted, the erosion of our rights has been going on a lot longer than just this administration. I fear we're acting like the frog being slowly boiled alive, never noticing how hot the water has gotten until it's too late to jump out.
"My terror and my pity rests in what we have become: a population that lets itself be pandered to, be bought with ridiculously cheap tax-cuts that cost us so much more in the no-so-long run"
Somewhere I've got a quote stashed away that I hadn't decided whether to use or not, I think it's from Benjamin Franklin, about how once the populace realizes it can vote itself money, that's the end of the republic.
You're being an idealist (I should know how to recognize one by now, since I'm called that all the time). I hope you're right. I fear you're not. I don't think we can afford to wait and see based on that hope, because the stakes are so high and it's so hard to see the threshold until long after we've crossed it.
So I'm an idealist, and even I am scared.