[Today’s run: rest day]
I guess one more on politics today. Sorry about that.
[Reading over this again later, I don’t think I expressed myself very well…]
I’m on an internet discussion group about running. Someone posted a comparison of school policies now verses ‘the good old days” which included a mention of spanking. Another guy then said he lived in Louisiana during grade school and he didn’t appreciate being paddled, finishing the comment with a jab at “southern backwardness” or some such.
So of course there are some southerners who piped up about that, and then others said that no one should ever be spanked, and finally, a woman piped up and said that the “good old days” were filled with un-good things like Bull Connor going after civil rights protestors with dogs and fire hoses, etc.
So it was “pound on the south” day and I got a bit tired of that.
I’ve only lived in the south for a bit less then four years and my opinion has been maturing over time.
Since I can’t publish that on the running list without starting another round of complete hooey, I’ll put it here. If they can find me they can comment.
Every generation has good and evil. The same Germany that produced Hitler also produced Bonhoeffer and both Bull Connor and Martin Luther King Jr. came from the same south. (And if you assert that all the whites were evil and all the blacks were good you fall into the mirror-image of the racist attitudes you condemn.)
I reject the idea that “progress” is an inevitable path of improvement. Some things were better at times in the past and some things are better now. Like all generations, there is evil here now.
Given the trends of polling on “Is our country on the right track”, it looks like most people agree with me.
The “good old days” actually did have some parts that worked better then they do now, and some parts that didn’t. There was great evil and great good, those we still have. And the great mass of people will be more concerned with their own small problems and keep their head down and try to get through each day.
Picture today is of an old railroad swing bridge at Waverly Ferry where we were fishing this afternoon. Just to the right of this picture is a broken span which landed on what used to be the eastern shore of the Tombigbee River but now is an island.
3 replies on “One more time, for now”
No slavery so for sure the long run trend is good.
Mt. Rushmore has two slave owners on it. The 20 dollar bill has the face of a man who was behind the Indian Removal Act, various forced relocations, and Trail of Tears (that happened after he left office).
I doubt a forced relocation of a people would occur in this day and age in America.
Women have been able to vote for less than 100 years. It’s hard to fathom an America without that. That’s progress.
Those are two good points, slavery and women’s suffrage.
Last forced relocation was in the 1940’s, so I wouldn’t go so far as
to say it couldn’t happen.
We have a replacement issue for slavery, of similar moral weight: abortion.
But the movement seems to be toward limiting that and maybe it will someday
be reduced to the actual medical-need cases.
Japanese Internment, yes – really bad. 70 years behind us but _could_ happen. We lost Habeas Corpus after 9/11 and adopted torture as policy. (I could go on about displacement of millions from their homeland owing to poorly planned invasion… Force relocation by ignorance and neglect?) My point was the long run trend, which is especially positive given current day contrasts: Americans fill their cars with gasoline made from Saudi oil and Saudi women can’t drive. Child labor, prison (forced) labor, and egregious pollution in America is a thing of the past but American consumers load up on Chinese goods and send e-waste there to be recycled.
I do not equate abortion with slavery, morally. I am certainly no fan of the procedure, but I would rather women are able to chose safely than to choose in the back alleys. In these thing the rich always have options (fly to a country where it is legal) and the poor have fewer (or none). (Also, personally, I never understood he general Christian view of abortion. Aborted soul goes directly to heaven, zero risk of going to hell. The eternal fate of the soul is paramount. Losing out on 80 years of mortality is not much to exchange to get such a guarantee…)