Dancing in the End Zone

Shortly after the Big Bang, the universe went dark for a hundred million years.  Then physics kindled nuclear lights in the stars.  The world was in the dark after the fall of Rome for a thousand years before capitalism set humans free.  After World War II, the world lived in a dark cold war until the Soviet Union ended in 1991.

We are  now on the cusp of a new dark age.  We are about to elect as president a well known liar who should be in jail.

In childhood I was told that when a man is caught in a lie, he should feel shame.  That paradigm is now dead.   Confabulation is the norm among our better people.  Arrogance is perceived as authenticity.  Facts are dismissed as artifacts of a failed intellectual tradition.  We are in the twilight of the Age of Reason in America. 

How can our new president govern, given that she is known to be dishonest?  How can her administration function while tangled in a constantly expanding web of lies?   We like to think that you cannot fool all the people all the time, but there is no evidence that she believes it?

We toasted the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the end of the Cold War in 1991.  One man at our New Years party joined the toast but feared we might be entering an age of dangerous international instability.  He wondered if we might someday look back on the 80's as "the good old days."   

I will toast Ms Clinton’s victory in November, but I fear that she has already given her enemies tools they can use to destroy her.  And I fear she will continue to arm them.  The shameful way this election has been conducted may look benign, even enlightened,  in retrospect.

We need a Truth and Reconciliation process;  when those who have done wrong embrace the truth and express remorse, forgiveness becomes possible. Forgiveness can forestall a storm of hate.  If a Truth and Reconciliation process worked in post-apartheid South Africa, surely it can be made to work here.**   Am I dreaming?    

In the absence of a Truth and Reconciliation process, President Obama must pardon Mrs Clinton as soon as she is elected, for all past real or hypothetical crimes.  If she is not protected from the law she will be hounded by the law and distracted from more important things from the moment of her inauguration. The law might provide justice but, at this time in our national experience and in world history, we need a functional government more than we need justice.  

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* Abraham Lincoln is popularly associated with this "fool people" quote, but he may never have said it.

**  For more on Truth and Reconciliation, click here. Or click here.

Finally