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Showing posts from November 10, 2013

America Needs to Sober Up

The gifted “New York Times” columnist, novelist, and writer, Pete Hamill, battled alcoholism for years. It dramatically influenced every aspect of his life and nearly destroyed him. In one his books he tells how he would senselessly sit in a bar for hours and drink himself into a stupor. He writes, “The world was a grand confusion. Finally, when I was drunk, and my mind couldn't do what I wanted it to do, I went home. I would lie alone in the dark, feeling that I was a character in a story that had lost its plot.” I know that feeling, literally. Many of us do. But figuratively, it has great meaning, too. For me, it is such a profound description of where we are in this broken country of ours. A beautiful and gracious nation, we are nevertheless floundering in our own “grand confusion.” We are drunk with some powerful inebriating fury and dysfunction that leaves us incapacitated, unable to do what we really want and need to do as a people. From our highest leaders to th