Reply #129: The Fruit Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

[Demeter]

Although we Americans come from every spot on the planet, a kind of virus infects those who stay to mingle their fortunes in the melting pot. It is that elusive echo of the Enlightenment that brought this nation into being. And since the people of the Enlightenment in America were predominantly English, that same radical strain of which you speak runs through our nation, too.

There are other strains of thought, religious fanaticism mostly, that run countercurrent to the basic Enlightenment heritage. And each strain waxes and wanes. Some times I wish the especially self-defeating ideas would die a swift and permanent death. Occasionally, one noxious one has. Usually to be replaced by two more obnoxious ideas.

If Clinton hadn't upset the fascists' timetable, we would have had that revolution by now. We wouldn't have had any other choice. But because the wobbly electoral process managed to deliver Clinton and Obama, we are still trying to change peacefully. At least, some of us are.