I’m listening to the reading of the Declaration of Independence on NPR this morning as I read the news.

I am not encouraged as the two hundred and thirty two years old litany of complaints echoes through my head and I compare them to the nature of the recent news an analysis (see the clippings at the side) relating to the same issues in this country today. From the latest uses of the police and the military and intelligence, to the further co-opting of corporations, to the short-sighted capitulation of politicians who have proclaimed solidarity with the principles of of this document and our Constitution, we seem to be going backwards.

Washington is so full of contrasts between principles and actions — that is, hypocrisy — that one becomes weary rather than more indignant. One feels foolish to get riled up sometimes. The culture encourages the belief that to repeatedly ask for such discrepancies — obvious to all who bother to look — to be reconciled is to be “biased” (like everyone else, and therefore hardly worth paying attention to) or merely to pedantic to be relevant.

But if today has any meaning at all, then it is to raise such things in even higher relief. Perhaps it is the inherent nature of the State?