June 2010
Play
To all you soccer-haters in the U.S. ;)
“No, soccer isn’t going to become the national sport or replace football or basketball. Maybe it doesn’t develop into much more than a once-every-four-year diversion.
What’s wrong with that, though? What’s wrong with another small step toward appreciation and admiration? What’s wrong with soccer causing people to cheer in work break rooms and crowd into bars in the middle of the day? What’s wrong with a few more flags flapping in the air? What’s wrong with everyone feeling a dose of American pride during a time when the recession keeps lingering and the wars keep going and the oil keeps leaking?”
-Dan Wetzel
“But our political culture affects the way we think about the past as well. Too often, when progressives think of American history, we think only of the snapshots: those glorious moments when a historic bill is signed into law, or when the great progressive leader thunderingly confronts the forces of reaction. It’s good to remember those; they are our lodestars. But they are moments. Actual history is slower, more tedious, and certainly less uplifting. It’s not for Obama’s sake, but for liberalism’s over the long haul, that we need to consider this reality and proceed in full awareness of it. It’s only by seeing this fuller picture that we can know how history actually unfolds in real time and place our present experience within that context. We don’t do nearly enough of that. Cable news and op-ed pages and websites are a kind of modern-day camera obscura, giving us an image to be sure, accurate in a way, but upside-down. The changes we want to see won’t happen in 18 months, or in two years, or four, or probably even eight. Indeed, the entire Obama era, if it lasts eight years, is best thought of not as a culmination, or a self-contained time frame that should be judged a failure if X, Y, and Z don’t happen. It’s the start of a process that may take 16 years, or 24; that may be along the way interrupted or undone; that will be fought tooth and nail, as we’ve plainly seen these recent months, by others whose idea of America is incomprehensible to us but who are citizens too, with the same rights we have. They (and by the way: no despair on their side! There is rage, to be sure, but judging from the Tea Party events I’ve been to and watched, it is a joyful rage) and the corporate interests and the elected representatives on their side have a lot of power. Liberal despair only reinforces their power and helps to ensure that whatever gains are made during the Obama term could quickly be rolled back. And if that happens, we are back, ten years from now, to fighting the usual rearguard battles. With this in mind, some perspective is in order.”
—Michael Tomasky (via azspot) (via think4yourself) (via abcsoupdot) (via jesuisperdu)
