“Who hurt you once, so far beyond repair, that you meet each overture with curling lip…”
Paul Gosar’s picture brings this famous line (Ruth Zardo in the Louise Penny novels) into my mind. Physically defeated. Small, without substance. Afraid. Self loathing.
These traits pervade the far right movement. They know the truth in their marrow a…
“Who hurt you once, so far beyond repair, that you meet each overture with curling lip…”
Paul Gosar’s picture brings this famous line (Ruth Zardo in the Louise Penny novels) into my mind. Physically defeated. Small, without substance. Afraid. Self loathing.
These traits pervade the far right movement. They know the truth in their marrow and it screams. It robs them of restful sleep and peaceful hours when awake. They resort to believing in lies with full knowledge of their actions. They alienate family and friends, even if not known to the public. These despicable leaders, like djt, are alone with their misery.
It may take a few years or many, but the racism of skin color and religion will boil off and the distillate of our common humanity will be there. Maybe just in time to sooth Mother Nature and leave a habitable place for our children and grandchildren.
I would feel better too - could I share your confidence in your optimistic scenario - Republicans with some insight, racism washed away, climate change mitigated. Maybe I listen to too much CSpan or to too many voters while campaigning or too many scientists - but seriously, almost none of what you say rings true to my experience.
I have no such illusions. I only see Republicans heaping disaster on top of disaster while declaring Mission Accomplished. I only know that I must do all I can to turn out significantly more voters for Democratic candidates, at every level of government.
It sounds more and more like the lunatics have taken over the asylum (excuse the old style phrasing). I just can't understand the idiocy of those Republican Representatives and followers. Somebody please put a check on them and their dreadful behavior.
I grew up there and graduated from high school there. I still see what a few of them post on Facebook. Not a word about January 6th, nada. And continued support for death star donny and the party of death.
Yes. Extremely so. I grew up here, moved away, returned a few years ago to help with aging family members & every single day I grow more despairing at how ugly & hateful & delusional the beliefs are of the majority of voters. Black give-no-quarter American flags and Q flags multiply weekly in my area. These two flags mean “no prisoners- kill the enemy (Democrats)” and “Democrats worship Satan, sex traffic children & eat babies”.
And, having just seen the news, I know there will be celebrations here this weekend because Rittenhouse got away with murder. Plans will be made to do what he did and use the same “ooh-it was self defense!!” excuse.
There are pockets of sanity in this extremely red state but not many.
I have to agree with you to a certain extent. However, in the 1920s Indiana had the largest membership in the country in the KKK. I grew up among people who, for lack of a better phrase, were casually racist. They were not hostile, just said a lot of prejudiced things. Much more recently, but before death star donny, I went to a family reunion in Wabash and Huntington county (my father's family) and my cousin and I were dinged because we ate at the Mexican restaurant near our motel. Sigh.
No bunch of right wing fanatics was ever more pathetic, or widely despised by their fellow citizens than Mussolini's black shirts during the puppet Salo Republic. Did that stop them from committing atrocities? No, it did not. With their world collapsing around them, they did more and worse. Contemptible people in power remain dangerous and behave worse as they feel their power slipping away. The arc of the universe bends towards justice but a few bad actors can temporarily twist it in the other direction with grisly results. That disfiguring of decency always comes with a body count and generational wounds.
We have a very brief moment in which we can do everything in our power to keep our current crop of black shirts from gaining the absolute power they crave. Getting rid of them later will be much harder and a whole lot uglier.
You write well. We MUST "boil off" the racism born of skin color and religion to get that distillate of humanity. We haven't done it yet, as is painfully obvious.
Bill writes as one who knows the bedrock truth of our equality. We should know too, if only from observation, how difficult it can be to boil off delusions and the vast price paid in suffering and human lives of all previous attempts to attain that distillate.
So much is going to depend on education, at all levels -- hence the determination of those who mean to foist their ignorance on us to sabotage all forms of public education. Let's spare no effort to bring about the triumph of truth, in the hope that more and more of the deluded will recognize the underlying reality that beneath the skin, beyond the misery of our prejudices and beliefs, we are all just human beings with the same fundamental need -- and right -- to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That, and the understanding that there is in fact no need to "pursue" happiness. it's present as groundwater, even in our desert. There must be moments, however fleeting, when even the greatest champions of oppression and woe-for-all will have known that experience of being at ease, just enjoying life, for no apparent reason.
Thank you, too, Christy. As one who has followed political developments quite closely for many decades, I feel most grateful to Heather Cox Richardson. Her dedication in bringing historical context to current events is all the more inspiring, coming as it does at this crucial juncture in the life of the American Republic—and in world history.
As for the community of readers that has formed around Letters from an American, I feel more than fortunate, privileged to have encountered such a lively, kind, thoughtful group of people, so many of whom show the intelligence of the heart, not just the head.
I'm very much a European, so it's inevitable—despite having been exposed to US politics since a childhood in which American magazines made Cohn, Schine, Whittaker Chambers, Richard Nixon and the egregious Senator McCarthy familiar figures—that I should be less partisan than many of you. Besides, I have since then been a confirmed skeptic, unable to root for any political party... or, for half my life, to relate to any religion. (For this, you can blame the Blitz and all those ugly faces in Life or the Saturday Evening Post…) Even before the Kennedy assassination, I don't think I was ever unaware of America’s failings or your country's contribution to all that's wrong with our world… Despite which, I saw America as the Realm of the Possible...
Yet, not even after the unprecedented alienation I felt on arriving in New York for my first visit in 1994, not even after my first sight of Trump Tower or the gigantic 666 dwarfing St. Thomas’ Church on 5th Avenue could I have imagined what the possible held in store for us twenty-two years later. Despite the fact that, among my friends, I was almost alone in expecting the result of the 2016 presidential election… Despite distanced and dispassionate comparisons at the time with circumstances surrounding the rise of Hitler…
These have since been borne out by events.
Now go to Rob Boyte’s comment and the straightforward account he provides via a link to a sproutsschools.com item explaining Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity. I found this particularly enlightening since, although I think more in terms of delusion and ignorance, I hadn’t come across anyone who sees stupidity as “in essence not an intellectual defect but a moral one. There are humans who are remarkably agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but stupid.”
My own theory posits levels of stupidity, the lower ones involve herd behavior, more dangerous in groups than individuals, while the higher and infinitely more dangerous stupidity can arise only in persons with a high IQ. This is unquestionably a moral defect, one of which we’ve seen plenty in modern history.
Troubling is the current outbreak of misleaders including several with no discernible positive qualities but a mediumistic ability like Hitler’s to channel and express the repressed contents of the collective unconscious. This makes for a dangerous combination between an individual who would otherwise be a nonentity and a great mass whose hatred and resentment would otherwise fester quietly without finding any large-scale outlet.
Wow, love Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity. Sadly, I know the lower and the higher. They seem to have come into clear focus during the tea party hate feast, to me anyway. Sorry, I seem to be forgetting W/Dickie’s horror show. Yep, i’m old, I can go way back.
Wow. I just watched this. It explains how and why-what has and is happening occurs. There is a conscious decision to be stupid (and lazy and powerless and controlled). There’s so much more explained succinctly in this short video. We must stop pretending tfg supporters are interested in being rational. They are not. I hate what this showed and I know it’s the truth. What to do with that except stay conscious and keep choosing to do the right thing. Support sanity. I wish I felt more optimistic. I also just read a piece on psychopaths and I am mixing the two together I think. They both address the issue we’re dealing with. Thanks for letting me vent :)
Why folks don’t pay attention to his siblings reporting he is not well I don’t understand. There has to be some sort of mental fitness test for anyone running for office. It’s the only humane way to run a country.
"It may take a few years or many, but the racism of skin color and religion will boil off and the distillate of our common humanity will be there. Maybe just in time to sooth Mother Nature and leave a habitable place for our children and grandchildren."
Thank you for this. And thank you for the reference to Ruth Zardo, very fitting and appropriate.
It was sad to hear his brother and sister say he is mentally ill or just plain crazy! They also said he has fallen for and is a big Trump supporter. Sad to say there are way too many people like Gosar. They are so gullible!
“Who hurt you once, so far beyond repair, that you meet each overture with curling lip…”
Paul Gosar’s picture brings this famous line (Ruth Zardo in the Louise Penny novels) into my mind. Physically defeated. Small, without substance. Afraid. Self loathing.
These traits pervade the far right movement. They know the truth in their marrow and it screams. It robs them of restful sleep and peaceful hours when awake. They resort to believing in lies with full knowledge of their actions. They alienate family and friends, even if not known to the public. These despicable leaders, like djt, are alone with their misery.
It may take a few years or many, but the racism of skin color and religion will boil off and the distillate of our common humanity will be there. Maybe just in time to sooth Mother Nature and leave a habitable place for our children and grandchildren.
There. I feel better.
I would feel better too - could I share your confidence in your optimistic scenario - Republicans with some insight, racism washed away, climate change mitigated. Maybe I listen to too much CSpan or to too many voters while campaigning or too many scientists - but seriously, almost none of what you say rings true to my experience.
I have no such illusions. I only see Republicans heaping disaster on top of disaster while declaring Mission Accomplished. I only know that I must do all I can to turn out significantly more voters for Democratic candidates, at every level of government.
It sounds more and more like the lunatics have taken over the asylum (excuse the old style phrasing). I just can't understand the idiocy of those Republican Representatives and followers. Somebody please put a check on them and their dreadful behavior.
Power
It is very difficult to do this in Indiana.
I grew up there and graduated from high school there. I still see what a few of them post on Facebook. Not a word about January 6th, nada. And continued support for death star donny and the party of death.
Yes. Extremely so. I grew up here, moved away, returned a few years ago to help with aging family members & every single day I grow more despairing at how ugly & hateful & delusional the beliefs are of the majority of voters. Black give-no-quarter American flags and Q flags multiply weekly in my area. These two flags mean “no prisoners- kill the enemy (Democrats)” and “Democrats worship Satan, sex traffic children & eat babies”.
And, having just seen the news, I know there will be celebrations here this weekend because Rittenhouse got away with murder. Plans will be made to do what he did and use the same “ooh-it was self defense!!” excuse.
There are pockets of sanity in this extremely red state but not many.
There have never been very many pockets of sanity.
But the insane tried to keep a low profile, now the mad are proud
I have to agree with you to a certain extent. However, in the 1920s Indiana had the largest membership in the country in the KKK. I grew up among people who, for lack of a better phrase, were casually racist. They were not hostile, just said a lot of prejudiced things. Much more recently, but before death star donny, I went to a family reunion in Wabash and Huntington county (my father's family) and my cousin and I were dinged because we ate at the Mexican restaurant near our motel. Sigh.
A light shade of purple in parts of Tx
No bunch of right wing fanatics was ever more pathetic, or widely despised by their fellow citizens than Mussolini's black shirts during the puppet Salo Republic. Did that stop them from committing atrocities? No, it did not. With their world collapsing around them, they did more and worse. Contemptible people in power remain dangerous and behave worse as they feel their power slipping away. The arc of the universe bends towards justice but a few bad actors can temporarily twist it in the other direction with grisly results. That disfiguring of decency always comes with a body count and generational wounds.
We have a very brief moment in which we can do everything in our power to keep our current crop of black shirts from gaining the absolute power they crave. Getting rid of them later will be much harder and a whole lot uglier.
Eloquently Stated!!!! It is indeed SCAREY!!!! Not once in my life,( I am 65yrs. young), have I felt scared of our Future, more then Now!!!!
Let's hope it doesn't degenerate to this ... Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom: Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Hope without action is a slender reed to lean on.
You write well. We MUST "boil off" the racism born of skin color and religion to get that distillate of humanity. We haven't done it yet, as is painfully obvious.
Bill writes as one who knows the bedrock truth of our equality. We should know too, if only from observation, how difficult it can be to boil off delusions and the vast price paid in suffering and human lives of all previous attempts to attain that distillate.
So much is going to depend on education, at all levels -- hence the determination of those who mean to foist their ignorance on us to sabotage all forms of public education. Let's spare no effort to bring about the triumph of truth, in the hope that more and more of the deluded will recognize the underlying reality that beneath the skin, beyond the misery of our prejudices and beliefs, we are all just human beings with the same fundamental need -- and right -- to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That, and the understanding that there is in fact no need to "pursue" happiness. it's present as groundwater, even in our desert. There must be moments, however fleeting, when even the greatest champions of oppression and woe-for-all will have known that experience of being at ease, just enjoying life, for no apparent reason.
And currently the despicable forces have tripled down on destroying truth in education. Thank you for your comment and presence here Peter.
Thank you, too, Christy. As one who has followed political developments quite closely for many decades, I feel most grateful to Heather Cox Richardson. Her dedication in bringing historical context to current events is all the more inspiring, coming as it does at this crucial juncture in the life of the American Republic—and in world history.
As for the community of readers that has formed around Letters from an American, I feel more than fortunate, privileged to have encountered such a lively, kind, thoughtful group of people, so many of whom show the intelligence of the heart, not just the head.
I'm very much a European, so it's inevitable—despite having been exposed to US politics since a childhood in which American magazines made Cohn, Schine, Whittaker Chambers, Richard Nixon and the egregious Senator McCarthy familiar figures—that I should be less partisan than many of you. Besides, I have since then been a confirmed skeptic, unable to root for any political party... or, for half my life, to relate to any religion. (For this, you can blame the Blitz and all those ugly faces in Life or the Saturday Evening Post…) Even before the Kennedy assassination, I don't think I was ever unaware of America’s failings or your country's contribution to all that's wrong with our world… Despite which, I saw America as the Realm of the Possible...
Yet, not even after the unprecedented alienation I felt on arriving in New York for my first visit in 1994, not even after my first sight of Trump Tower or the gigantic 666 dwarfing St. Thomas’ Church on 5th Avenue could I have imagined what the possible held in store for us twenty-two years later. Despite the fact that, among my friends, I was almost alone in expecting the result of the 2016 presidential election… Despite distanced and dispassionate comparisons at the time with circumstances surrounding the rise of Hitler…
These have since been borne out by events.
Now go to Rob Boyte’s comment and the straightforward account he provides via a link to a sproutsschools.com item explaining Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity. I found this particularly enlightening since, although I think more in terms of delusion and ignorance, I hadn’t come across anyone who sees stupidity as “in essence not an intellectual defect but a moral one. There are humans who are remarkably agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but stupid.”
My own theory posits levels of stupidity, the lower ones involve herd behavior, more dangerous in groups than individuals, while the higher and infinitely more dangerous stupidity can arise only in persons with a high IQ. This is unquestionably a moral defect, one of which we’ve seen plenty in modern history.
Troubling is the current outbreak of misleaders including several with no discernible positive qualities but a mediumistic ability like Hitler’s to channel and express the repressed contents of the collective unconscious. This makes for a dangerous combination between an individual who would otherwise be a nonentity and a great mass whose hatred and resentment would otherwise fester quietly without finding any large-scale outlet.
Wow, love Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity. Sadly, I know the lower and the higher. They seem to have come into clear focus during the tea party hate feast, to me anyway. Sorry, I seem to be forgetting W/Dickie’s horror show. Yep, i’m old, I can go way back.
Damn, I have forgotten the days when politics wasn’t front and center in my life. Just worried about wildlife and the environment.
Peter, I posted this on my reply today, but it seems to fit what you say about ignorance versus education.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc&list=LL&index=3
Wow. I just watched this. It explains how and why-what has and is happening occurs. There is a conscious decision to be stupid (and lazy and powerless and controlled). There’s so much more explained succinctly in this short video. We must stop pretending tfg supporters are interested in being rational. They are not. I hate what this showed and I know it’s the truth. What to do with that except stay conscious and keep choosing to do the right thing. Support sanity. I wish I felt more optimistic. I also just read a piece on psychopaths and I am mixing the two together I think. They both address the issue we’re dealing with. Thanks for letting me vent :)
Why folks don’t pay attention to his siblings reporting he is not well I don’t understand. There has to be some sort of mental fitness test for anyone running for office. It’s the only humane way to run a country.
Very good questions.
His most devoted supporters ARE that relative you only invite to Thanksgiving out of mistaken sense of family loyalty. No help there.
Elegant. Thank you.
Beautifully said. I love Louise Penny, and I love Ruth. I feel better too, thank you.
From your keyboard to God’s ear.
Bill, you have a poet's pen...
"It may take a few years or many, but the racism of skin color and religion will boil off and the distillate of our common humanity will be there. Maybe just in time to sooth Mother Nature and leave a habitable place for our children and grandchildren."
Thank you for this. And thank you for the reference to Ruth Zardo, very fitting and appropriate.
Yes, thank you. Ruth is one of my favorite Penny characters.
Mine too.
It was sad to hear his brother and sister say he is mentally ill or just plain crazy! They also said he has fallen for and is a big Trump supporter. Sad to say there are way too many people like Gosar. They are so gullible!
May you be SOOOOO right!!!!
Ahhhhh......Ruth.
Me too. Thank you Bill.
This, just might be wishful thinking. We’ll see what’s left after their childish tantrum!!!
I’m old, but I’ll try to believe you.
Beautiful.