http://www.nytimes.com/...
Thomas L. Friedman writes about the "we" we no longer seem to be:
I hate to write about this, but I have actually been to this play before and it is really disturbing.
I wanted to share this. Hopefully, it will resonate with you as it did with me...
I was in Israel interviewing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated in 1995. We had a beer in his office. He needed one. I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords. They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all.
And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, "God will be on your side" — and so he did.
Who are we now? How did this happen? Can it be fixed?
Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.
I told you once I'm an optimist, not an ostrich. I wanted this to be different. I saw greatness in Barack Obama (still do); I saw a country loving its new president and his family...maybe my optimism got a little too big for its britches.
Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word "we" with a straight face. There is no more "we" in American politics at a time when "we" have these huge problems — the deficit, the recession, health care, climate change and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that "we" can only manage, let alone fix, if there is a collective "we" at work.
Okay, that's enough with the quotes. I hope you read the whole piece. In the meantime, maybe WE can get together in the comments peanut gallery...