First they came for our plastic bags, and I did not speak out – because I am but a small voice and could do nothing.
I offer this allusion because Martin Niemöller’s poem remains as profound today as it was when the Lutheran pastor penned his post-war confession in 1946. It’s language of persecution, oppression, and injustice, along with the attendant feelings of shame, regret, and the aura of culpability, ring true today in the Empire State as they once did in the totalitarian morass that immediately succeeded the Weimar Republic.
More on that in a moment. First, a bit of (more) recent history.
By the time Mr. Maguire whispered the word “plastics” into Benjamin Braddock’s attentive, albeit naïve, ear in the 1967 hit movie The Graduate, it had already been two years since Continue Reading “First They Came for Our Plastics Bags…”
We Need High-Speed Broadband, Now!
For people that once possessed command, high civil office, legions and all else,
now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”
– From Satire X, Juvenal, ca. 100 AD
When the Roman satirical poet Juvenal wrote these lines centuries ago, he meant it as an exposé of government corruption. It also represented a warning to a populace too eager to sacrifice freedom for immediate delights.
Unfortunately, rather than a cautionary alert, Juvenal’s “bread and circuses” has become a blueprint from which every dictator since has built his empire.
You can now add Andrew Cuomo to the long sorry list of power-mad rulers seeking to Continue Reading “We Need High-Speed Broadband, Now!”