We are the dream
September 14th 2010 00:31
Each reality is the dream of another, and each sleeper a god unknowing.
-- flavor text of Venser’s Diffusion, from the Magic: the Gathering expansion Future Sight
September 11th is a day for pretty speeches, and occasionally genuinely rousing ones. President Obama attempted to invoke America’s greatest orators when he described the country as “one nation – one people – bound not only by grief, but by a set of common ideals.” This is very much in line with the way Americans like to see themselves. It goes along with being a people who often tend to look for solutions, to believe that whatever problems (in this case, partisan politics) they have can be overcome if only they can find the right way.
Too much of this can sometimes whitewash the real conflicts and divisions that exist in American society, whether they be racial, religious, regional, class-based, or more subtle (perhaps the division between the white males who have “most of the power,” as Stan Smith described it, and everyone else). These conflicts are rooted in real philosophical differences – unless you have another explanation for why Phyllis Schlafly and Diana DeGette have literally the opposite views – and shape many people’s experiences.
However, these conflicts do not always divide along the same lines that they have historically. President Obama embraced infuriatingly retrogressive misogyny during his primary campaign. One of the nation’s most prominent supporters of gay rights is a conservative Republican. The failure of the media and, largely, both parties to recognize the way conflicts like this have been realigned is contributing to the public’s increasing dissatisfaction and resentment. They would do well, over the next few months, to remember another aspect of the American characteristic noted above: when people don’t like the way something is working, they do something about it.
-- flavor text of Venser’s Diffusion, from the Magic: the Gathering expansion Future Sight
September 11th is a day for pretty speeches, and occasionally genuinely rousing ones. President Obama attempted to invoke America’s greatest orators when he described the country as “one nation – one people – bound not only by grief, but by a set of common ideals.” This is very much in line with the way Americans like to see themselves. It goes along with being a people who often tend to look for solutions, to believe that whatever problems (in this case, partisan politics) they have can be overcome if only they can find the right way.
Too much of this can sometimes whitewash the real conflicts and divisions that exist in American society, whether they be racial, religious, regional, class-based, or more subtle (perhaps the division between the white males who have “most of the power,” as Stan Smith described it, and everyone else). These conflicts are rooted in real philosophical differences – unless you have another explanation for why Phyllis Schlafly and Diana DeGette have literally the opposite views – and shape many people’s experiences.
However, these conflicts do not always divide along the same lines that they have historically. President Obama embraced infuriatingly retrogressive misogyny during his primary campaign. One of the nation’s most prominent supporters of gay rights is a conservative Republican. The failure of the media and, largely, both parties to recognize the way conflicts like this have been realigned is contributing to the public’s increasing dissatisfaction and resentment. They would do well, over the next few months, to remember another aspect of the American characteristic noted above: when people don’t like the way something is working, they do something about it.
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