Where the Heck are We Going As A Nation?

Posted on June 27, 2002 in Liberty

“One can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.” — Graham Greene

The nation is at a turning point and I honestly don’t know if it is for the worse or for the better, via some deus ex machina that will now come into play following today’s decision of the Supreme Court to throw its support behind the increasing power of the religious right in this country and demolish our nation’s schools. We have here the New Jim Crow decision, one that will hopefully be reversed when and if the court obtains a new, liberal majority. But I am not looking for it soon.

Some people are beginning to talk like John Brown, that this nation’s present sins will not be purged except through blood. Sometimes I think that the blood that will be shed is going to be mine. One chatter told me that she didn’t mind. If some of us have to die for the better future, to move the mass of American public opinion back to the true middle of the road if not entirely to the left, that would be a good thing. I have mixed feelings about martyrdom. On one hand, I am ashamed that I have never been tested by an arrest or violence against me. On the other, I want to stick around to see what happens, to see that better world if and when it comes. It has seemed to me for a long time that America has been going down the road Germany took in the 1930s and Yugoslavia in the 1980s. Some ardent nationalists seem intent on suppressing what is good. I don’t know if it will be a shame or a relief for me if the storm troopers don’t come to my door to arrest me. I’m not likely to advocate violence. But we’ve come to a point where people are starting to kill off their symbols, to attempt to replace them with an insane “individuality” which is actually conformity. Is the year 2002 or 44 BC?