On our recent bouts of national rudeness:
What I find amusing is how some believe that the death of civility is a new development. It started with Joe Wilson and was compounded by Serena Williams. Civility has been chained to a rock getting its liver picked out by buzzards since the golden children of the Greatest Generation were encouraged to let their freak flag fly, to use a horrid phrase.
Reasons for engaging the world, rather than avoiding (which is my default - and fault):
I’ve always thought it’s imperative to stay engaged with your times until your time, singular, is up. Otherwise your sense of the world calcifies, and your worst impressions become your default opinion. The glories of the imagined past become a means of self-admiration, because you were not only lucky enough to be there but smart enough to get it. Kids today, they don’t.
And some nostalgia:
It is to much to suppose that a wary code of mutually recognized and dimly comprehended male aggression kept things civil? That it was also predicated on horribly, terribly, oh-so-wretchedly sexist notions about behaving in front of women made men behave? It probably took ten years after the end of Hats to breed a certain respect out of men; it took another ten years of dealing with The Confusion of the Door (if I open it, I’m a chauvinist pig; if I don’t, I’m a selfish manchild who lacks social graces. What does she want? What does she expect? (Help me Hugh Hefner!)
The internet is incredible. I've never been to Minnesota. Never read a hard copy of their newspaper. But here I am in Atlanta reading their star columnist's personal musings, daily.
I don't think enough people appreciate the power we have right now.
I think I'll break out An Army of Davids for a second read.
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