Clarence Darrow lost The United States vs Scopes and very few people remember that the verdict was later overturned on a technicality or that the case was never retried.
Sad to say, I've given up on the news.
Tired and frustrated at the end of the day, worn down with unfairness, incivility, and stupidity, I find I just can't face listening to any more tales of genocide or torture or crooked, two faced politicians or radical extremists or cruelty to animals or bank fraud and all the profits that accompany it. The country I was raised in and loved has become an almost foreign land - compromise, essential to governing, is no longer possible, men in power rail against the poor, the disabled (Siberia?? Why not just shoot'em?), and the forgotten, and cardboard Christians with secret agendas based on hate burn holy books, promoting murder then awkwardly distancing themselves from the consequences, as if they didn't know. Tolerance, once a virtue, seems to have become a new deadly sin. If I hear the latest sound bite phrase "Boots on the ground" once more I think I may suffocate, even if it is on my beloved public radio.
Truth is, it's getting hard to give a damn anymore.
We've become de-sensitized to the way the world works, given up on defeating the demons of war, hunger, civil rights, poverty, and especially politics. We have, at long last, an educated, elegant, virtuous president and we sneer at him, question his parentage and his right to rule, tell racy racial jokes all the while claiming to champion equal rights and what's best for the people. Find me a politician who actually cares more about the people than getting re-elected or filling his pockets or his next press conference and I'll find you a soon to be out of work, used up, and disillusioned idealist with less name recognition than dirt and a bleak future. Should a lone voice of sanity, reason or sincerity be heard above the fray, he or she will be shouted down, stoned, possibly exiled or hung in effigy. Narrow minds provide narrow guidelines for becoming part of the process of change and not everyone is welcome at the table. We are on the verge of becoming the United States of Corporations - government by, for, and of the people with power, winning and losing on technicalities.
Beware the next monkey trial. We may not have come as far as we think.
"Fanaticism and ignorance are always busy and they need feeding."
Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow in "Inherit the Wind"
PS: As I am about to publish this, I have a change of heart when I hear that Glenn Beck is leaving.
One less ignorant fanatic polluting the airwaves is cause for celebration, maybe even renewed hope.
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