Perhaps it is the case that God has made good his ancient threat — not on the original Israelites but on us, the little startup republic that had the temerity to model itself on their kingdom. If we are governed by children, they are very bad children, indeed. (Bad, bad, elderly children.) It is not the case, as the proverb insists, that in democracies the people always get the government they deserve. But we do get the kind of government we will tolerate. Our dueling partisanships are intoxicating in both senses of that word: pleasurable and poisonous. But like any other addiction, it holds power over us only to the extent that we permit it to do so. Addictions can be very difficult to break — getting over them may be hard, but it is not complicated: You put the plug in the jug.
We are a strangely ungrateful people. We talk about the “carnage” of the American condition as we live lives of wealth and ease that John D. Rockefeller could not have imagined. If you want to see carnage, fix your eyes, if you can stand to, upon the Kurdish allies we have just abandoned to massacre at the hands of the Turkish dictator in an act of shockingly dishonorable cowardice.
They’re doing penance in Tennessee today. So should we all.
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