From: ayoub	Date: July 5th, 2008 07:41 am (UTC)		(Link)

That last bit... A powerful statement...

	From: ideealisme	Date: July 5th, 2008 11:09 am (UTC)		(Link)

I'm not American, but I know what it's like to feel deeply disappointed with my own people, so you have my sympathy.

After all, Auden didn't say of Yeats "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry" for nothing!

	From: ysabetwordsmith	Date: July 5th, 2008 03:20 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I love Ireland. Celtic territory is the home of my heart, physical location notwithstanding. I regret the tormented past and troubled present. But ah, it does make for brightly burning poetry.

	From: ideealisme	Date: July 5th, 2008 10:14 pm (UTC)		(Link)

you won't find much of that in modern day Ireland - endemic corruption and land grabbing and building in the latest building boom have rendered the place irredeemably ugly. Irish towns and houses are some of the least spiritual places I have ever seen. That might be historical - a legacy of being messed around as tenants has us fanatical about land ownership even if it is a miserable concrete strip in the middle of concrete jungle.

That said, there are some places that are still wild and lovely in the west and in the midlands there are places that are passed by and still move more slowly.

	From: ysabetwordsmith	Date: July 5th, 2008 11:04 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I've seen all of those things, in my observations from afar. Here too, it is the quiet out-of-the-way places where some spark of the original fire remains. America's amber waves of grain may be slowly going the way of Ireland's green hills, but it's not quite all gone yet.

From: bearleyport	Date: July 5th, 2008 12:30 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Fireworks are big noisy BS that trash our nation's parks. About 100 years ago, Colgate & Co. was having the US Mail read and you could get thrown in jail for sending out birth control info, etc. Less than 40 years ago, Daley was czar of Chicago -- one of the biggest and most corrupt cities in the country -- and of the democratic party. His people would come into the voting booth with you and "help" you vote. If you didn't vote for his candidates, you could be out of a job or have your business closed down by government agencies. Why be nostalgic? To think that there was ever a "golden age" in this or any other country is also a fantasy.

The phrase "divine right" was used in both articles you mention. As long as the majority tolerates the dictatorship of religious belief on morality or public policy, liberty and justice will be compromised. Faith requires no credible evidence or reason for support, making it a 5th column in the minds of the faithful.

	From: ysabetwordsmith	Date: July 5th, 2008 03:35 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I have no illusions of a golden age. I know that the "Greatest Generation" locked up people in detention camps for having Japanese ancestry, that many of the founding fathers kept slaves, and that the cavalry used to play catch with the severed breasts of Navajo women. History is full of horrors. We've made a lot of progress.

But in recent years we've also lost a lot of ground in a lot of ways. I don't like that. I regret it and I resent it. People say "America is #1" because it used to be like that in many ways. Flawed though it was, America has kept to the cutting edge of cultural evolution and technological discovery in many areas most of the time. That's not true anymore. There are countries with better health care, saner governments, more peaceful populations, more productive scientists. Not everything in one place, no ... but enough to knock America out of the top 10, 20, or 50 places on a lot of lists.

I look at my own life and compare where I am now to where my family was 10, 20, 30 years ago. And despite everyone's hard work, and some back-and-forth, we've lost ground. The same is true of many people I know. We've lost so much ground that it's hard to help each other out when someone stumbles, because there's just that little fault-tolerance left in the system. I read articles that put hard facts, numbers and ranges and reasons, behind my personal observation of things degrading. It's very real. That's not good.

America has never been perfect. The land was obtained by means of genocide, developed by slave labor and the labor of those who weren't owned but fared little better than slaves. The end does not justify the means; the means determine the end. And so we have problems with illegal immigration and race relations and labor conflicts. But despite that America has accomplished some glorious things. We spearheaded the drive to stamp out smallpox. We put men on the Moon. What have we done in the last decade that comes close to that?

I just don't like where America is and where it seems to be headed. It disappoints me.

	From: minor_architect	Date: July 6th, 2008 12:04 am (UTC)		(Link)

You might have liked the Independence Day celebration we had in our neighborhood better. After our barbeque, kagetsume (my fiance'), his mother and I hung out on the front porch and talked. Kids attending our next door neighbor's party were setting off fireworks in the middle of the cul-de-sac, under the watchful eyes of their parents. (They were also constantly reminded to "Go pick up that trash! Don't you leave that out in the middle of the street!" which I greatly appreciated.) The Mexican neighbors who live across from us were also having a party, but their kids were taking swings at a piñata rather than lighting up sparklers or Roman candles. It really was too bad that a sudden thunderstorm forced us all back inside - still, it was nice while it lasted. :)

	From: ysabetwordsmith	Date: July 6th, 2008 12:10 am (UTC)		(Link)

That does sound cool.