Short and Sweet
Aug. 10th, 2016 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogSpent my third night of the past nine in a third different ballpark. This may be the first three-game winning streak of my life (four if you count Opening Day so very long ago). Stories and pictures will follow. Most of today's media was devoted to analyzing what sounded awfully like a call by the Republican nominee for the assassination of his Democratic counterpart.
It was a joke. He meant something else. The media is making something out of nothing. Hillary did the same thing once. Those are all the responses you'd expect. What is unchanged, though, is the unbridled vitriol this candidate, and his supporters, all have for his opponent. They spent much of their convention chanting "Lock her up!" and I've seen "Hillary for Prison 2016" bumper stickers around here.
In these times, I am mindful of the words of the first-ever Republican president, who was shot dead by one sympathetic to the losers, and who presided over the most bitter division this nation has ever seen. He ended his first inaugural address, shortly before all hell broke loose, with these words:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
It took four years and thousands of lives before that dream could even begin to be realized. One wonders if it ever has been. With shit like this going on, it seems more distant than ever.
It was a joke. He meant something else. The media is making something out of nothing. Hillary did the same thing once. Those are all the responses you'd expect. What is unchanged, though, is the unbridled vitriol this candidate, and his supporters, all have for his opponent. They spent much of their convention chanting "Lock her up!" and I've seen "Hillary for Prison 2016" bumper stickers around here.
In these times, I am mindful of the words of the first-ever Republican president, who was shot dead by one sympathetic to the losers, and who presided over the most bitter division this nation has ever seen. He ended his first inaugural address, shortly before all hell broke loose, with these words:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
It took four years and thousands of lives before that dream could even begin to be realized. One wonders if it ever has been. With shit like this going on, it seems more distant than ever.