I don't mean that morally, I mean it isn't the way to go. My daughter lost a friend very suddenly this fall, and the Facebook memorial thing took over. It was incredibly alienating for her, and yet there was no other means for the community of this kid -- he dropped dead of an aneurism at the age of 23 -- to be in touch with each other. This is the way it is now?

Dear Joan,

I started reading your posting, but was stopped short by your claim that Clinton was the best on civil rights as president prior to Obama (though it isn't clear yet what Obama's substantive, versus symbolic role in that regard will be). I fear you have overlooked LBJ, who pushed through all the vital Civil Rights Legislation, started Head Start, the War of Poverty, and in his historic speech to the nation when introducing legislation (if memory serves me, the Voting Rights Act, but on that I'm uncertain) actually quoted the song, "We Shall Overcome." He did so, moreover, knowing that he was sacrificing his party's chances in the future. He overcame his own racism to do it.

Why do you think Clinton was better? Welfare reform wasn't exactly in the spirit of helping the poor, for instance.

Hey, please, this is like arguing over the literary qualities of Jackie Collins' novels. I love Brown (an Amherst College alum, where I teach, and who I hope will give us money) precisely because he is so cheesy. I hope to read this evening.

Dear Glenn,

I think your post is very impressive, and it builds on the argument one of your letter-writers (whom you cited as making good points!) made, to the effect that we are much further down the road to economic ruin now than we were in 1993. Like during the 2008 campaign, some of the imagery and slogans out there, amplified by what my friend and political theorist William Connolly (Johns Hopkins) calls the christian/capitalist/resonance machine -- fundamentalist christians, neo-liberal masters of the universe join together and get their message amplified on a system of right-wing media that acts as a propganda wing of the GOP. Fear is more palpable and affective than logic, and creeps into all of us, making us more timid and them more mad. The point is,many of these fundamental christians are racists, and disguise their racism behind a hellfire brimstone damnation of souls. Think about the very popular Left Behind series. Read it! The head of the UN, who is really the Devil, is a charismatic black man.

Moreover, this occurs after the country has been frightened and traumatized by 9/11 and its wake, as well as the economic collapse of 9/15, and its wake, where the real interests of DC were first, to go to war, lying to gain majority support, and then, to bail out the superrich. There are good reasons these people don't trust government, even as they become more scary and scared. It isn't brave people who carry guns around, it is frightened ones.

Really, can't we put together a compelling ad? I hope it was donated labor...

I lost my wife to cancer a couple years after your loss. On 9/11 itself we were sitting in Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston, and the goddamn tv monitors started showing the obscenity as we waited for an MRI. My wife was an architect -- she looked at me as said, "We had the WTC as an exercise in grad school -- this tower is going to implode." And then it did. Our appointment was cancelled. Our doctor was in charge of emergency medical assistance, and had to prepare for a trip that would, in the end, never be needed, since the line between life and death was so clearly drawn by the collapse of the towers.

The terrible unreality of the reality of that day still distresses me, as of course is does so many ((including one of my best friends who was home three blocks from ground zero on the day) and there are never going to be the sort of cloying, life affirming, uplifting and inspiring answers to the questions you have posed here (implicitly as well as explicitly). I didn't cry, but I wanted to, as I read your essay. So thanks.

This is a very smart reading of a very subtle phenomenon. The withdrawal from trust in government being explained through this lens illuminates it in new ways. (I'll be teaching this to my Amherst College students,) Many thanks, Mr. Benjamin.

My daughter was part of a high school, self-organized group of students called Esperanza, that, inspired by a local human rights lawyer whose suit in Federal court was thrown out, started sending shoes and medical suppllies to the Indians. She continues to go there, now a friend to many of the folk there. She brought back pictures, she has seen crude oozing out of the ground adjacent to waste oil ponds, in the middle of villages. The toxicity, the cancer levels, and of otherwise rare cancers, the hideous rashes, birth defects -- oh, yes, dirty ignorant Indians.

For ANYONE to deny what Texaco/Chevron did there had devastating effects on the indigenous population is a bald faced lie. The environmental scientist must be blind. Or something. And if we are about to give corporations full 1st Amendment right, as thug Roberts is leading the criminal elements of the Supreme Court to do, maybe we need to start holding executives criminally responsible for their deeds.