Lyndon Johnson was thirteen of the most interesting and difficult men I ever met. He could be as couth as he was uncouth, as magnanimous as malicious, at times proud and sensitive, at times paranoid and darkly uneasy with himself. Freud would have had a field day with him.
When we were covering the 2008 campaign I told my young African American colleagues that despite the historical significance of victory, Barack Obama was going to break their hearts.
Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy.
The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories in Rupert Murdoch’s empire and rightwing talk radio, and corporate media have their back.
There is a historic strain of dominion theology which says, taking its references from the Psalms, that man is made just a little lower than God, and that we are the crown of creation.
The left wing would see to it that ordinary people were included in the bargain. Both would keep the great bird on course. But with two right wings or two left wings, it’s no longer an eagle and it’s going to crash.
Those rules divide the world into Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news.
Having lost faith in all else, zealots have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike first at those who had not struck us.
