Thursday, September 10, 2009

Rain Gods

I'm a big James Lee Burke fan. In his Latest book, Rain Gods, he writes,

"Right here he had found the backdrop for the whole human comedy. And what was the lesson in any of it? Hackberry's father, the history professor had always maintained the key to understanding our culture lay in the names of Shiloh and Antietam. It was only in their aftermath that we discovered how many of our countrymen - who spoke the same language and practiced the same religion, and lived on the same carpet-like, green, undulating, limestone-ridged farmland - we would willingly kill in support of causes that were not only indefensible but had little to do with our lives."

Besides the obvious beauty of the prose, I wonder if this passage makes me want to cry because in my mature years I more easily understand how a nation can slip into civil war, its unsophisticated and ignorant people persuaded by demagogues to set aside the teachings of love and rational thought in favor of righteous violence in the guise of patriotism.