I've been at this a long time. Sometimes it feels even longer than it's been like these thoughts (or what seemed to look like thoughts from a distance) thirteen years ago when I first offered them which was not that long after I'd started scribbling stuff every day and throwing it at the Interwebz to see what sticks.
If you were here then, thanks, and you already know what I called it; and if not, welcome and it was:
Today's the Birthday of the President Named for the Car?
Yeah, that's the spirit and that's who we named the guy after, that big, long barge of a car. Or maybe not. This used to be the day we honored the man who was President when a still young country had such a determined difference of opinion on something as fundamental as to whom the blessing of liberty was extended that the only way to settle is was by a conflict of arms.
In 1860, after decades of compromise and accommodation over a dozen issues that always came back to the idea of freedom vs. slavery, Abraham Lincoln, failed Congressman, failed candidate in 1858 for US Senate from Illinois, look up the Lincoln-Douglas debates if you despair about our democracy and be of good hope, campaigned as the candidate of the fledgling Republican Party and was elected to the office of the Presidency of the United States. And, practically as he was inaugurated, the United States of America already philosophically and economically divided, took up arms against itself and disintegrated.
It's curious, to me, that we would call the War Between the States (its official name, btw) the "Civil War" since historians agree it was often anything but. With other nations picking sides to advance their own agenda, the two sides, bloodied and bedraggled, fought one another from 1861 through the spring of 1865, when the Confederate States of America, prostrate and exhausted, surrendered and
Modern America began.
What we are now is what we were then. Provided an opportunity to begin again with 'malice towards none and charity to all' as outlined by the soon to be murdered reelected Lincoln, instead, as a nation, we veered from that path and continued to settle old scores and create new wounds through the latter half of the 19th, all of the 20th and, now, into the 21st century.
We just concluded another Presidential election but from the rhetoric that's floated around since it concluded (and it is over, by the way), you have to wonder if we've forgotten where we came from and how we got here.
We just concluded another Presidential election but from the rhetoric that's floated around since it concluded (and it is over, by the way), you have to wonder if we've forgotten where we came from and how we got here.
We cannot disagree without becoming disagreeable and when the day ends no one, wins. It's the death of dialogue and debate and a dearth of civility and kindness. The US Presidential elections have become the Greatest Show on Earth, sorry Ringling Bros., and there's barely enough time to clean up after the elephants and the donkeys in the center ring before we open the tent flaps and let the next crowd in for the show.
But I digress. Didja find a good parking spot? We got valet service for the high-end cars, like the Beemers, Benzs, Caddies, Lexus and (of course!) the Lincolns-lemme get somebody to take your keys. No scratches, I promise.
-bill kenny
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