Please.....

[poliphilo]

All through the 90s I was an optimist. And a bit of a New Ager. I thought we were on the brink of something- of some big leap forward in human consciousness. I wasn't sure if it was going to happen because of scientific advance or because lots of advanced souls were reincarnating to push things along or because the aliens were about to intervene but- whatever- I had great expectations of the 21st century.

And then along came Karl Rove and people like him and stomped all over the tender young shoots.

And I went from being a starchild to a grouchy misanthrope.

A pity really.

These first seven years of the century have been pretty damn awful. 

But Rove's gone and he's gone because the mix of cynical machiavellianism and crass materialism and brain-dead religious hoodoo which he stood for has been tested and found wanting.

Is it foolish to hope for change?

If I'm lucky (?) I could have another 30 years on this planet.  That's a long time.  Please let it be about something other than stupid wars for stupid oil and the icecaps melting.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The reason I'm not wholly hostile to the idea of an American imperium is that I'm well aware how much we owe you for intervening in WWII.

I like the passage from Jefferson. Some things never change.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

That is a most gracious way of looking at it. If I remember my history correctly, the Nazis were essentially conceived at Versailles and nurtured on years of extreme economic hardship and dreams of revenge. Those conditions existed because of US intervention in the Great War, at least in part. I think most of the money wrung from the Weimar Republic flowed ultimately into US accounts. In modern terms, Hitler was essentially blowback from our taking sides in the previous war, a role for which we were paid handsomely.

The Nazis were an extraordinary circumstance that the nascent American imperium helped create. From that perspective, I don't see how you owe the US anything.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting angle on the interwar period- and one that had never occured to me before.

I'll have to think about it.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

And do check my memory, if interested. Seems a little shorter every year.

I have been thinking on what you said about corruption among the political class here. Since Twain had his laugh at the expense of Congress, the wily critters have embraced their criminal lifestyle, sometimes without a hint of shame. That it's as bad or worse now than in any period of our history wouldn't surprise me at all.