I’m still depressed about the state of politics and the state of humanity and the state of human communication and the state of human mutual understanding. I’m letting it all get to me too much.
Animosity and intolerance and prejudice and prejudgment are all part of the human condition, along with love and joy and solidarity. I don’t know why I should expect any of this to change.
I should probably disengage. I know I won’t, because I’m such a politics junkie and love clicking on website X or Y all the time to see the latest news. But I should at least try. Or if I can’t disengage, I should at least stop trying to expect perfection from us human beings and accept the messiness of the world.
Progress, not perfection.
Only if we can face the ugliness and brokenness of the world head on and see it for the way it really is can we do anything to fix it.
And we’re not going to fix, at least not you or me or any of us alive today. It’s doubtful if there will ever be a moment where things are perfect, but its the process that is important.
Being a politics junkie and — more importantly — being involved in the political process is one way to contribute to the process.
It sounds like you could use a break to “detox.” Take a day or two and find something else to engage yourself and then come back to the politics refreshed.
And BTW, Happy Purim!
I think your response to all this is pretty Euro-esque. When Euros look at America and contemplate the American Dream they knee-jerk reason “But, American is *not* perfect. The dream is fake! Or, at best, it’s a battle lost!” What they don’t get, popularly as a culture, is that the American Dream is about the very notion of trying and the very act of engaging in the struggle for the operfect social compact — and not giving up.
Americans have an audacity to hope, not out of a naive world-view but due to a unique, perhaps perverse vision hearkening back all the way to the CityOnTheHill heralded by the now historic Puritanism. It’s an old dream now transformed to fit our ideals of justice and truth, but it’s the same one that brought many of us together as the planet’s first composite-nation of multiple and disparate tribes.
So long as that dream is intact and alive in our popular culture i have an un-ending amount of hope and admiration for Americanism. And so should you.
rob@egoz.org