The Vertiginous Thrill
If you stumbled in here from Newsweek, sorry. We didn't have time to pick up, things have been busy at work, and then this. You know how it goes.
At first glance you might view some of the entries in this blog as critical or even cynical. But that is not our intention. Because ultimately, we are idealists. Disappointed idealists, yes, but still holding up, in our own minds the possibility of something better. A lot better.
Excellence is possible, you know. There's no reason a government can't bring to its mission the same commitment as the New England Patriots bring to a football game, an artist brings to his creation, or a ballet dancer brings to "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude".
We see excellence every day. It's a product of attitude, skill, determination, and persistence. John Wooden has said "A man or woman who strives conscientiously to become the best that he or she is capable of becoming can stand tall on Judgment Day. That person will be judged a big success regardless of whether he or she has accumulated riches, glory, or trophies."
Is it too much to ask that a few of these people be present in our government?
posted by Anonymous at 7:17 PM
1 Comments:
The sin, the essential moral sin, of this administration, is to talk about freedom constantly, but not believing in it beyond a sort of Social Darwinist promotion of their social class, and in virtually every policy action, remove choice, remove self-determination, remove privacy, remove the social safety that allows risk-taking, erode and demean the presumption of equality that is essential to American economic and political success, and endlessly bale public wealth for the digestion of the 4 chambered stomachs they call their friends.
Even worse, and greater by far than our anger, is their contempt for their own supporters; I did a cartoon years ago with a killer whale running for congress in the district of penguins, and here it is, embodied. They build a new , increasingly rigid aristocracy based on disingeuous cultural division, and middle class, rural Americans are buying it, voting in their own doom out of fear, taught to them with the stink of incipent fascism.
Katrina proved the deep and general indifference of this government for Americans, and it also proved, to my lasting optimism, that the people of the United States respond to calls for sacrifice and lasting kindness and know they have to work to be better than they are. Katrina demonstrated that Americans want to do more than shop. Give us half a goddamn chance and we want to share our prosperity, and even in the gordian knot of race relations, the storm brought out an American instinct that A) we do all belong and B) we've let our poorest people down, and C) we thought we were better than that.
This government's greatest failure is it's endless contempt and cynical indifference to the actual lives of the people of this great nation. It is the deepest betrayal of the best of our culture and of the promise of the United States.
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