Neal Gabler holds out little hope. I don't disagree with those who report on why millions of Americans - especially white Americans, especially white men - are frustrated by stagnation and other economic woes. But nothing justifies the thousands in the Trump crowds who chanted "build the wall" and "lock her up", jeering at reporters, etc. And of course the political system really is rigged - against the cities and populous states - against us! As of today Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead is 1,750,000 and counting. -gwc
Farewell, America - BillMoyers.com
by Neal Gabler (2X winner of the LA Times book award, and the Time magazine non-fiction book of the year)
America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.
Whatever place we now live in is not the same place it was on Nov. 7. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently. We are likely to be a pariah country. And we are lost for it. As I surveyed the ruin of that country this gray Wednesday morning, I found weary consolation in W.H. Auden’s poem, September 1, 1939, which concludes:
“Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.”
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.”
I hunt for that affirming flame.
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