{"id":4318,"date":"2010-09-02T20:11:39","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T00:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4318"},"modified":"2010-09-02T20:53:45","modified_gmt":"2010-09-03T00:53:45","slug":"soul-sickness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/02\/soul-sickness\/","title":{"rendered":"soul sickness…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a couple of my last posts where I was talking about the Iraq War, I kept thinking about something that seemed a bit like over-speculation. But the thought lingers. It’s about the recession and the economy. It’s about the Tea Party and the persistence of the conservative white right even in the face of a failed presidency. It’s about the birthers and the notion that Obama is a Muslim. It’s about the prominence of some of those crazy charlatans like Limbaugh and Beck.<\/p>\n

I said, "We are not a people<\/em> like the Germans are a<\/em> people<\/em> with a homogeneous  ethnic heritage. Only our principles and our history bind us<\/font><\/strong>" … and that’s been a hard road. We had a disasterous Civil War over racial differences in our first century. A hundred years later, the country was gripped with another civil conflict we now call the Civil Rights Movement. At an earlier time, we said "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore<\/em>." Now we’re building border fences and talking about immigration reform. We’re a heterogeneous lot in a big place. All we have in common are a few good documents from our founding and a short history [234 years].<\/p>\n

During the last Administration, we sustained the first real attack on our soil. We rallied around the flag like at no other time in my lifetime. And then our own government betrayed us. In secret, it plotted a war of aggression. In secret, it tapped our citizens’ phones. In secret, it tortured prisoners of war. In secret, the Department of Justice became part of a political apparatus. In quiet, it deconstructed our Civil Rights Institutions. It lied outright to start a war. It lied to the UN, then ignored it. The Administration, besides being secret was divisively partisan. And the slogans of patriotism were used to cover a government that was much more like a Monarchy than a Democracy.<\/p>\n

Those few good documents were tarnished, at times beyond recognition. The covenant of our founders was not honored. Our history was betrayed with duplicity, direct lies, and omissions.  All of those forces that bind us were besmirched. The people on the conservative side were inflamed about the liberals. The liberals were disdained and the butt of contempt. One nation under God<\/strong><\/em> became Two nations – one under a specific version of God, another under seige<\/strong>.<\/em> We are divided now in a different way than ever before, suffused with hatred. The net product of the Bush years was to fragment us into warring tribes. I personally believe a lot of that was done on purpose.<\/p>\n

So what’s wrong with our economy is that people are afraid to engage it. That’s my specluative thought. The have nots<\/em> are out of work. The haves<\/em> are holed up. And the people in the middle<\/em> are disillusioned, scared, and tired. But all of us are weary and wary. Politically, we’re split into pieces – grasping to find the history that got lost along the way in this last decade – actually got thrown away. We are divided in every dimension – income, religion, race, etc. We’ve come to expect corruption from any and every direction. It’s more than our economy that needs to recover. We need to recover our  America – whatever that glue is that binds a nation of mongrels together – history, principles. I think Obama knows that, but can’t see how to bring it off. I’m not sure that anybody knows how to bring it off. He’s pissing off liberals by trying to keep the door open for the conservatives. He’s pissing off conservatives because he exists. And until we recover America, I doubt that we can recover our economy. In some ways, Glenn Beck is right – we need to restore our honor [though I hasten to add, he’s way off the track about what that means]. We have a soul sickness afflicting both sides of the aisle. Right now, America is a big place full of people, no longer a people<\/em>…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a couple of my last posts where I was talking about the Iraq War, I kept thinking about something that seemed a bit like over-speculation. But the thought lingers. It’s about the recession and the economy. It’s about the Tea Party and the persistence of the conservative white right even in the face of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}