Not About God

I don't actually recall much about the Clinton years. Wasn't paying much attention.
But I do seem to remember they were able to talk about exactly, specifically how Jews and Muslims would behave and organize themselves peacefully in Jerusalem, going about their practices. I don't remember it working, but that's what the conversations were about, at least for a time.
In my first post here, I wrote that this blog is about civics, but I think that's not quite true. As I write it, post after post, it is now about war. Eww. Wars with weapons and wars of words. War of both at once. This is the crucible of civics. The ultimate test. It may itself be the abscence of civics, but I've never been there, so I do not know. (And so this is not journalism.) Is there a separate civics in wartime, degraded and miraculous? There must be, if only there are people still alive and communicating and acting. Listen up.
Moving outward, there is is the heart, then the mind, then the hand; then there is ethics, then morals, then civics, then spirituality. Always.

I'll also be thinking on this page about the run-up to war. And the way it pulls hard at the fabric of a people placed on that edge.

Even if we are an ocean away from almost every bit of "the action," America is yet rife with pulling forces that debate and coalesce not only around the actual war/s in the Middle East, but just as much (and I can't believe I'm saying this) around the culture war: the B.S. media culture war that also has real elements in schools, families, town-gown relations, television, bedrooms. It's no coincidence that the usual sides of each debate are usually peopled by the same two sides of people. And more than the other ones, this war is waged on the fabric of America itself. Look out there.
There is the child, the adult, the community, the local and state governments, the churches, universities and other civil institutions, and then the federal government. And the Feds have the army.

I once saw a clip of George Bush on TV, responding to an admirably direct question from the audience by drawling, "you know, I never thought about [how evangelical yearning for the apocalypse might affect my Middle East policy]."

I yelled at the screen, loudly, "LIAR!"

See, I think it is all related.

And it now brings more than rumors of war.

Eww.