end of the beginning

 

Opinion

Guest Essay

What Has Happened to My Country?

Nov. 7, 2022

(NY Times)

3 reader comments

Interested Citizen

NYC

I think it shows how fragile stability is in the world and how easily - how incredibly easy - it is, and always has been - to manipulate "the masses" and descend into a mob mentality.  Those of us who came of age in the previous century just happened to live in a bubble of stability.  Many of us just didn't realize it was the exception and not the rule.

Antoine

Taos, New Mexico

I'm inclined to believe that the great "American Experiment" has failed.

T.S.

New England

I ask the same question.  

What has happened?  

A group of my friends and myself gather about once a month on Sundays to watch the NFL games and Red Sox in the summer.  We have been doing this for over 30 years.  

        Conversations were political on occasion and always civil.  

Starting around 2015 things slowly began to turn.  It began with one guy's dislike for Obama.  Month by month it festered into hate.  He has total belief in the very worst things that have been said about Obama on the radio.  There is no way to reason with him.  

When Trump came along each one has fallen into the rabbit hole.  

They are all now in lockstep with right wing media and are all hardcore election deniers.  One is now so militantly anti-face mask that he harasses strangers for wearing them and brags about it.  

Years ago, he was not remotely like this.  ...I am quite dismayed for what has happened to my friends and quite worried from seeing how common this has become.

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        Liz Cheney (Wyoming) says Donald Trump will not be president ever again.

        I'll listen to her.  She has more knowledge and insider-info than I do.

On You Tube there's a video titled:

Full Cheney:  'If Donald Trump Is The Nominee Of The Republican Party, The Party Will Shatter'

uploader / channel:  NBC News

It's this past Sunday's Meet The Press, I think.

It is worth a listen.  We can learn what's been happening while making a salad.

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When I started freshman year at Boston University I walked from the dormitory where I had a Bob Dylan poster on the wall above my bed, to the bookstore where I could buy the books for my classes.

        I saw a paperback book titled Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye written by Kenneth O'Donnell and Dave Powers.  It was not expensive, and I could buy it, so I did -- and brought it back to my dorm room along with the books on the syllabus.  I had not been thinking about Kennedy, or wanting to shop for extra books, but I saw it and felt that I needed it.

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ONE

The End of the Beginning

Our memories of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy go back from Dallas over seventeen crowded years to the winter of 1946 in Boston, when he was a young war veteran getting into politics for the first time in a free-for-all fight for a vacant Congressional seat.... 

        But when Dave Powers and I think of John Kennedy now, we both remember him as he was on the Thursday morning of November 21, 1963, when he was leaving the White House to go to Texas.  That day before he died was a good day, when he was looking forward eagerly to his best years.   Everything seemed right for him, and for all of us.   

As he said at the time, quoting one of those obscure Victorian English poets only he seemed to know and remember, "Westward, look, the land is bright."

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