A Walk Backwards With Tom Jefferson

Good and evil. According to my post on the habits of American readers and American politicians, it appears that such a world of the absolutely virtuous and absolutely craven exists (with no middle ground), if only in the reading habits of Americans and the assumptions of American politicians. Over the last few days, this idea has been ornately decorated by listening to viewers call in to The Washington Journal on C-Span to voice their opposition, nay, their hatred of the immigration bill. The conclusion: we are being invaded by bad people; the good American body politic is being corrupted by foreign bodies.; our leaders have sold us (good people) out, and we have to defeat them. Should there be a strict maintenance of the borders--of course; however, the continuing American narrative of us versus them, good American gunslingers versus felons, murderers, rapists, terrorists, liberals (no, sorry, they are already in the country--the virus within)only creates a monstrous American body and voice, certainly a Hobbesian Golem that is going to right all the wrongs done to poor, virtuous Americans. In that gargantuan Hobbesian monster all the fears of the American populace (and there are quite a few) are expressed in a sweeping black and white sentence structure that reduces reality to a black and white movie televised by a station without adequate power and received on a battered set that at best gets poor reception. Eventaully, all the talk of good and evil will create an American landscape not even worthy of being paved over for a Wal-mart parking lot.