History's End
30 Nov 2011
Kevin Boyle, for the New York Times:
There’s a dark strain of bigotry and exclusion running through the national experience. Sometimes it seems to weaken. And sometimes it spreads … fed by our fears and our hatreds.
We have a tendency to focus on our differences instead of the similarities that connect us. Race, gender, sexuality. We construct these walls to separate ourselves from each other; it is not enough to be human, you must be human like me. I wonder if this comes from a notion that we see ourselves as the pinnacle of human possibility.