Sunday, October 19, 2014

Gridiron fans take refuge in the delusion

     

Civil rights protests in St. Louis have moved from the perimeter of the baseball park to the perimeter of the football stadium. After today's game, a fan spitting on a protester reassigned an exchange from a shouting match to a physical confrontation.

The sleepwalkers will see the peace they requisition when there is justice. James Baldwin had some wisdom for us half a century ago.

And here we are, at the center of the arc, trapped in the gaudiest, most valuable, and most improbable water wheel the world has ever seen. Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we-- and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others-- do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world. If we do not dare everything, the fulfillment of the prophecy, recreated by the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow, no more water, the fire next time. 

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