I Know...but I Couldn't

I couldn’t do it.

I said I was going to withdraw from political discourse. I said I was going to escape into the fictional world of my novel. The good news is that I am doing the latter, but it looks like I can’t do the former. Too much at stake, I guess. Or maybe I just can’t get over believing we can think our way out of the political mess we’re in, that this time it won’t take a civil war to break our partisan fever.

I’m posting a new piece today that draws lessons from my personal history growing up in the south. For a longer perspective, Jill Laporte has a new book called These Truths: A History of the United Stares. There are staggering lessons to be learned from the brutal truths of our past. (Here is Andrew Sullivan’s excellent review in today’s New York Times.)

We need to talk about these things. We need to understand what we have done and why. We may be driven by base instincts, but can we not still reason? We have to try.

And I still want (need) to be part of that process.