Neither Out Far Nor In Deep
Robert Frost uses the title above to mock a shallow, short-sighted public more interested in the trivialities of meaningless distractions than real life. It’s hard to complain about him; we are much that way.
In the most significant cases, our short-sightedness takes the form of a very short attention span and an even shorter memory. Only about three months after the discovery of Buchenwald Americans were fatigued at the sight of bleak newsreels on the prison camp’s sufferers. On September 11, 2002, the first anniversary of the terror attack on U.S. soil, the president declared that we are a “patient and steadfast” nation, and that “what our enemies have begun, we will finish.” Even then it was apparent that such confidence in our resolve might be misplaced. Now there is even more reason to doubt Americans’ steadfast patience to oppose terror.
But in less traumatic but still hugely significant areas of life our short-sightedness has less to do with time and more to do with distance. The Washington Post just reported on a claim Read the rest of this entry »
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