Brian KerrI’ve had a hard time these weeks knowing how to show up in the face of all the stuff that’s been going on. In my personal experience it’s a direct line to today from Bush v. Gore, which was my political awakening as a 19-year-old goofy-ass college student. The onramp to a quarter-century of horseshit. Of course this direct line goes back to the quashing of Reconstruction, and further back still. But something about this moment feels worse, the worst.
On the one hand, I’m with Edgar (King Lear): “The worst is not so long as we can say ‘This is the worst!’”
On the other hand, I’m with Orwell: “Nourished for hundreds of years on a literature in which right invariably triumphs in the last chapter, we believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism, for instance, is founded largely on this belief. Don’t resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does?”
Aaron