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And I dreamed I Was Flying
I was listening to Paul Simon’s An American Tune late last night, in the darkness of my bedroom as I tried, without much success, to fall easily to sleep.
Usually, music helps me transition from uneasy awareness of daily life to frustratingly fitful dreams, and my nighttime playlist can be an aid to ease me from one state to the next. But as I listened to Simon’s melancholy take on America’s path from the Mayflower to the Moon, I found myself feeling very far away from any understanding of where America is today.
Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I’ve often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
We are rudderless and aimless; without goals or sense of mission. If it is pointless to look in the rearview mirror and pretend there was a time when all was well, it is pure folly to imagine we are headed toward our halcyon days when we lack even the most basic plans for how to get there. As a nation, we do not have the organizational skills and intestinal fortitude to come to consensus about a path forward. Any reliable institutional memory that might inform us about how to pave that path is…
