It may be that the best time for Otherness has already passed. Clearly part of the basis for this renaissance has been wealth, especially the unprece… - David Brin
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It may be that the best time for Otherness has already passed. Clearly part of the basis for this renaissance has been wealth, especially the unprecedented comfort enjoyed by the vast majority of Westerners since World War II, in which very few of us can even conceive of starving
Glen David Brin (born October 6, 1950) is an American author of science fiction. He is the winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He lives in Southern California and has been both a NASA consultant and a physics professor.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Glogger at English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
I've long felt that the best minds of the right had useful things to contribute to a national conversation — even if their overall habit of resistance to change proved wrongheaded, more often than right. At least, some of them had the beneficial knack of targeting and criticizing the worst liberal mistakes, and often forcing needful re-drafting. That is, some did, way back in when decent republicans and democrats shared one aim — to negotiate better solutions for the republic. Alas, today's Republican Establishment seems not only incapable but uninterested in negotiation or deliberation. It isn't just the dogmatism, or lockstep partisanship, or Koolaid fantasies spun-up by the Murdoch-Limbaugh hate machine. Heck, even though "culture war" is verifiably the worst direct treason against the United States of America since Fort Sumter, that isn't what boggles most. It's the stupidity. The vast and nearly uniform dumbitudinousness of ignoring what has happened to conservatism, a transformation of nearly all of the salient traits of Barry Goldwater from:
He read about humanity’s age-old racial struggles. Had it really been less than half a millennium since humans contrived gigantic, fatuous lies about each other simply because of pigment shades, and killed millions because they believed their own lies?
Secrets are like snowflakes, nowadays—rare and hard to keep for very long.
