Dana Nails It

An excerpt from Dana Blankenhorn's latest post. Go read the whole thing. It should rule your thought this labor-less weekend. (This is why we like Dana, which worries us a little.)

"I believe that is how history will see the matter, as a grand distraction from what should have been the real business of our time, namely the effort to slow global warming, to save the planet, and to seek the stars. Our technology had reached the point in the year 2001 where these were in our grasp when we were brutally struck down – all 6 billion of us – by the events of September 11.

But I haven't read that anywhere, frankly. I haven't read it because we are all trapped in our own time, as Jefferson was, as Lincoln was. Transcending the mundane and seeing The Long View is very, very hard. It can also be painful. Abolitionists, Populists, New Deal Socialists, and Far Right theorists all got it in the neck, in the end, even if in the context of their time they were calling for the right remedies.

The work I'm doing on historical cycles shows this clearly. Prophets are always condemned in their time. Real change is made by those who moderate the forces demanding action against reality, who lean into the next Thesis as a sailor leans into the wind, going sideways in order to move forward." (My emphasis.)

He gives us Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Nixon (in a bad way) as our historical "prophets." Who out there will be ours???