O Sole Me-o
An epidemic rages through our holy land these days. And, no, it’s not the zika virus nor, as the TV commercials during the World Series games breathlessly inform us, is it Hepatitis C decimating the Baby Boomer generation.
It’s a pathological selfishness. Now, I’m not breaking any news here telling you that. The Me Generation 1970s was an era of saintly sacrifice compared to our self-involved times. Here are a couple of examples:
- This AM, NPR’s Weekend Edition ran a story about two geographically close but culturally, economically and racially far-flung big-city elementary schools that are slated to become unified. The reason being one school, populated by dark-skinned, poor, public housing kids, would benefit greatly from sharing the resources of the other which is white and wealthy. Not only that, the marriage of the two would further the goal of desegregation. The parents and administrations of the two schools currently are working out the unification details. There are, though, some detractors. One anti-unification woman was interviewed. She said she hated the idea. She’d moved to her neighborhood in large part so her kids could attend the so-called better school. The unification, she said, would be an assault upon her. “It’s a complete imposition on my personal space,” she said.
- The FBI yesterday revealed it has decided to nose around in more emails from the server run by Hillary Clinton while she was Sec’y of State. Merely mentioning the words email and Hillary in today’s pathologically polarized political climate indicates to certain citizens that she should be summarily shot. One of those citizens happens to be running for president under the Republican Party banner. He — whom I refuse to refer to by name — naturally reacted to the news. “Beautiful,” he said. The Republican Candidate for President (RCP) added the news would reinvigorate his floundering campaign. His bandwagon would be “really moving” now.
Let’s take the anti-unification parent first. She isn’t against a plan that is intended to benefit schoolchildren who’ve suffered greatly and, hopefully, will bring together institutionally divided segments of a profoundly segregated city because it may fail or is ill-conceived. Oh no. That’s for someone else to worry about. All that counts is how it just might affect her alone. She reigns, after all, over some self-defined territory where nothing or nobody else is of concern. Her “personal space” will be invaded, as hideously, say, as Germany rolling into Poland in September, 1939.
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Now let’s take on the RCP. If, as he and so many other Hillary-haters believe, the email issue is a horrifying scandal for which the Dem candidate should be imprisoned — or worse, then aren’t revelations about it something less than cause for glee? To the RCP, gradually learning about it is a succession of moments of sublime pleasure. Each tidbit of info regarding her so-far harmless private email server somehow makes his life better. He’s already said the email “scandal” is worse than anything that’s ever been done in this country. I assume he’s aware of such elementary school history topics as the Native American holocaust, slavery, the Civil War, the Great Depression, Vietnam, Iraq, and a couple of world wars. Let’s assume, though, he’s speaking in his normal sloppy, unimaginative hyperbole. It’s worse, then, than the conspiracy that claimed the life of Abraham Lincoln, Teapot Dome, and Watergate.
I was alive during Watergate. I don’t recall candidates for high office whooping it up and shouting, “Hurray, this is great!” No one dared to say, “Thanks goodness for Tricky Dick and his Plumbers and rat-fuckers. Now my chances at victory are going through the roof!”
Nope. But our RCP says of Clinton’s criminal, worst-of-all-of-them abuse of power, “This changes everything!” He says it hopefully, merrily, with boundless enjoyment. Uh-uh — the effect of the “scandal” on our great democracy means nothing to him. It only makes him, in his deluded, probably disease-impaired brain, happy.
That’s all that counts.
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O Sole Mio
No intro needed.
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