Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/author/a_shriverd/)
Large, organized, collective interests are at odds with the future of restorative justice: unions of prison guards, economic benefits to communities from prisons, and then—perhaps the most difficult injustice of all—historical crimes whose legacies subject whole groups of people to continuing injustice.
In short, it’s time for Democratic and Republican candidates to treat us citizens as adults who are strong enough to hear truth from our leaders and patriotic enough to sacrifice some important things on behalf of more important things.
My complaint to the politicians in the current electoral race is this: why are you so eager to pander for our votes that you refuse to tell us what modern-day sacrifices we all as citizens, ought to be making on behalf of the needs of fellow Americans and our world neighbors?
We meet in these pages eloquent summaries of how the evolution of the human mind may be the greatest mystery of all. Generations ago, modern physicists and astronomers informed us that “one of the stranger things about our universe is that we are present in it.”
On 9/11 we had the brief fortifying message from folk around the planet, “We are all Americans now.” Not blessed with a president who knew how wisely to respond to that world outpouring of empathy, we catapulted into a “war” against terror from which we have scarcely recovered.