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December 15, 2004
Comments to The Battle Not to Rage or Despair
I guess some people often prefer to respond directly to posts sent as Islands in the Clickstreams rather than register and add comments to the blog. So long as people do that, I'll add selected relevant responses to posts.
Response:
Hi Richard,
I've been getting your e-mails for years and have never commented, but this one struck such a nerve, I have to. For a while now I've been saying that the biggest problem we face is not the economy or even the war, but the increasingly pervasive distortion of reality. It's like screaming into a strong wind.
Even a few short years ago, when Bill Clinton lied about sex, the lying was considered an impeachable offence. Now the same people who so relentlessly drove that horse don't even bother to cover up the fact that they are lying--about things of much greater import than b.j.s in the oval office--and no one seems to care. The other night I saw a drug ad on television. There were heartwarming pictures of people holding hands and laughing and running on the beach. The soundtrack behind it was a full twenty seconds of a voiceover stating all the horrendous side effects, including kidney failure and death. It was chilling. But Americans don't notice that. They run in droves to their doctors to demand the latest pastel pill.
Over and over, the talking heads on the nightly news casually refer to spin doctors--people who are paid big bucks to turn truth into lies--and no one finds the fact of this outrageous. It is terrifying how quickly the abnormal becomes normal.
When you take the lies and mix in the bloodlust, it all starts to feel like Germany in the thirties.
Second response:
What you say about "history of this country through the twentieth century is largely not known by many of its citizens" is something I heard a couple of months ago from my 84 year old mother. It struck me
then, just as your article did now.
She lives in a retirement community and told me how she was appalled at seeing this in her contemporaries! The interesting thing is that she in a diehard Republican, so her 'despair' is in a different directions than yours.:-o Before you might dismiss her as an 'old lady', you should know that she is like her mother who lived to be 103 and was sharp and kept up on what was going on in the world almost until the day she died. My mom is even more educated and follows even more closely our current social, political and economic events.
So that kind of dichotomy from two experienced and well informed people concerns me. Are we, as a country, heading down a road where the side that has the most rage will win power?
A third response:
Those words make me feel less insane for whatever that is worth.
Posted by Thieme at December 15, 2004 06:51 PM
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