Are We There Yet?

From a Independence Day speech delivered in 1852 by Frederick Douglass to the Ladies of Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

It's a reminder that, although slavery is mostly gone, we have not yet grown into our noble words and hypocrisy is still with us.

Cognitive Dissonance Anyone?

Here's an interesting idea from Yuval Noah Harari  that that could explain a lot about politics today.

Yet the two values [equality and individual freedom] contradict each other. Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better of. Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality. The entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction....

If tensions, conflicts and irresolvable dilemmas are the spice of every culture, a human being who belongs to an particular culture must hold contradictory beliefs and be riven by incompatible values. It's such an essential feature of any culture that it even has a name: cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is often considered a failure of the human psyche. It fact, it is a vital asset. Had people been unable to hold contradictory beliefs and values, it would probably been impossible to establish and maintain any human culture. (164-165)