I grew up in the post-WWII years. I was born in 1945 (OK, so now you know I'm an old fart at this point in my life...), so my formative years were pretty much during this country's golden age. Sure, there were termites in the foundations so the whole thing was pretty shaky to say the least, but, still, those were, for some of us, golden years.
I grew up in a town in central New Jersey where we could leave our doors unlocked pretty much all the time...as a kid I never had a key because I didn't need one...the doors of the house were never locked. My town was a town of...I dunno...about 30-40,000 souls, and we had no problem with kids wandering around at will. None of my friends and none of my younger sister's friends were ever bothered. As a ten-year old kid, I could ride my bike just about anywhere in town without worrying about "strangers". Hell, as a 5-year old kid, I used to walk a couple blocks to friend's houses to play. Nobody thought anything of it.
I bring all that up to emphasize that my background is not the same as the background of adults who are 30 years younger than me. In many ways, we are from different places even though, geographically, we grew up in the same physical space.
I have mentioned before how much I like Fred Clark's writing. Frankly, I think he should be much more widely known than he is. I think he writes as well as any syndicated columnist from my youth...Fred is one of those people who grew up in the same space I did, only 30 (mol) years later. However, he is one person with whom I feel that I share something. For example, his latest blog entry Inquisitors is, once again, something I wish I had the talent and skill to write. I heartily recommend it to one and all: click on the link and read this.
If you go back about 4 years or so in my blogs, you'll note that I did not support Mr. Bush for a second term (for that matter, I did not support him for a first term although my support for Al Gore was tepid at best...to my eternal discredit.) I did not think Mr. Bush was the effective leader he tried to portray himself as being. However, I did not think that he was, frankly, as evil a man as he has turned out to be. George Bush has made me ashamed to be an American. If I had been alive in the the ante-bellum years of this country (and had the same ethical bias I have today) I would have been ashamed to call myself an American while my fellow citizens held other humans as chattels. George Bush has, by his absolute disdain for our freedoms, put himself in that same class of people. And he has sullied and stained our name and our honor. He is, in fact, the same kind of man as was his arch nemisis, Saddam Hussein. One of the things that give me hope is my faith that he will join Saddam in some corner of hell once he sheds this mortal coil.
When I was growing up...when parts of this country were Camelot...for some..., I was proud that we were the "good guys". Of course, when we played "cowboys and Indians" the Indians were always the bad guys and the cowboys were the good guys...it took me a until I read "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" to realize that my European ancestors were good at treating anyone not from their ethnic branch of the human tree badly...but, still, we were the good guys. We stood up for the oppressed; we fought for the ideals enshrined in our founding documents. Even though we built this country upon the forced labor of black humans whom the white Europeans enslaved on land basically taken by force from the native inhabitants, the ideals embodied in our Declarations of Independence, our Constitution and our Bill of Rights were shining goals for us to strive to attain. George Bush has sullied, stained and defecated upon those ideals, and, in the process, he has mortally injured this nation.
I could say more, but...not now. All I will say is that it is ironic that the freedom of expression that this medium engenders is both a strength and a weakness. It gives a huge number of people a public platform from which to declaim, but those very numbers tend to obscure and attenuate...depreciate what they are saying. Like I said, Fred Clark should be a respected syndicated columnist rather than a slightly obscure Blogger. (I say "slightly obscure" because he does have a following, which is a lot more than I can say for myself...) Those of us who have been lucky enough to find him...to find this bit of gold amid the dross...are the better for it. I just wish that more of our fellow citizens also had the benefit of his clear vision.
'Nuff said...
