{"id":15571,"date":"2015-12-22T12:33:12","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T17:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15571"},"modified":"2015-12-22T12:33:28","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T17:33:28","slug":"seeing-evil-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15571","title":{"rendered":"Seeing \u2018Evil\u2019 Everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Seeing \u2018Evil\u2019 Everywhere<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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Today\u2019s American politics sees demons everywhere \u2013 from \u201cevil\u201d foreign leaders to excessive fears about \u201cterrorism\u201d \u2013 while more mundane threats like crumbling roads, loss of good-paying jobs and inadequate health care get short-shrift, misplaced priorities addressed by ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.<\/p>\n

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It is depressing to witness the ongoing vitriolic voices of vituperation spewing out over the airwaves these days in what passes as \u201cpolitical debate,\u201d especially in Republican circles. Depressing also to know that we still have nearly a year more to go of this same political circus of infotainment whose chief purpose really is to distract the public from the deeper, darker and more pressing issues that affect the nation and beg urgent discussion.<\/p>\n

So history sometimes help us put these things in a little perspective. A fine article from the New York Times a few days ago \u2014 \u201cAnger: An American History<\/u><\/a>\u201d\u2014 provides some taste of the raucous history of prejudice, paranoia, fear and anger that seems perhaps always to have been part of the American political and social scene.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

A drawing of the Salem \u201cwitch trials,\u201d with the central figure believed to be Mary Walcott.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s unsettling in one sense \u2014 you can\u2019t help but wonder if there\u2019s any progress to be perceived over several hundred years. But yet there is progress of a kind. And in another sense it reminds us that things right now are not uniquely bad \u2014 and that perhaps much of this simply has to do with the human condition.<\/p>\n

And of course no country is without its prejudice, racism, paranoia, xenophobia and discrimination. Only somehow we expected our immigrant society to aspire more to the ideal of\u00a0\u201cThe City on the Hill.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seeing \u2018Evil\u2019 Everywhere Today\u2019s American politics sees demons everywhere \u2013 from \u201cevil\u201d foreign leaders to excessive fears about \u201cterrorism\u201d \u2013 while more mundane threats like crumbling roads, loss of good-paying jobs and inadequate health care get short-shrift, misplaced priorities addressed by ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller. It is depressing to witness the ongoing vitriolic voices […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[135,6963,10851,2500,792],"class_list":["post-15571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-cia","tag-consortium-news","tag-evil","tag-history","tag-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15571"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15573,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15571\/revisions\/15573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}