it's an enormous and very rare privilege
to have lived in the days of good government
across nations and centuries
few people have ever done so by a rare bit of
of luck certain groups in a few corners
of the globe tasted decades of this
remarkable anomalous blessing they might
foolishly especially if they traveled
little seldom read history books or had
a very high estimation of their own
populations they might even have started
to assume it was a natural or god-given
norm yet the default state of almost all
nations is quite other it is
authoritarianism bullying demagoguery
corruption monopoly racial segregation
and state-sponsored aggression and
murder
we will not now it seems be living in
dramatically unusual times it was the
years before that will be remembered as
unusual a daring bet against the facts
of our nature we are sliding into a new
age of darkness we are reverting to a
mean civilization was always simply an
unlikely concept those who are afraid
are typically reassured by optimism all
will eventually be well the kindly tell
them but we need stiffer darker council
we should explore not what might ideally
happen which leaves us oscillating
painfully between hope and despair but
what will happen if the worst comes to
pass we need to make ourselves entirely
at home with catastrophe looking at it
squarely in the eye so it's not to keep
catching glimpses of it here and there
and so taking fright and you every time
we stand to see that whatever comes to
pass will in a desperately reduced and
pitiful form
still be survivable a home could be
built among the ruins there might be
some sort of life to be led
despite everything nothing is ever
properly unbearable not least because we
always retain access to the best escape
route the stoic philosophers of ancient
Rome those poor souls agitated beyond
compare by the antics of their
hysterical thin-skinned murderous
Emperor's would known to calm themselves
down by holding up their veins to the
light and calling out freedom knowing it
could if it came to that all be over in
minutes
we shouldn't be surprised by our fellow
citizens this is what the human animal
is really like very sweet at points from
close up usually generous two small
children and the elderly hard-working
but highly prone to delusion tribal
offended by strangers an inclined to
rational analysis and with a fondness
for slaughter and reckless messianic
plans the elite routinely derided as
out-of-touch and not so on the basis of
forgetting how much milk or the rent
costs rather on the basis of forgetting
have dark and broken human nature really
is
there's a natural longing to do
something quickly and angrily there's an
equal longing to give up and hide the
Council of quietism neither feels quite
right
neither endurance nor explosion the only
true avenue is to commit ourselves to
years of careful adroit plotting to
bring about a renewal of that now ever
more implausible dream a land governed
for a little while longer by a spirit as
fragile as crystal of wisdom and
tolerance