The anniversary of the events at the Pettus bridge has been mostly moving, with stirring remarks from John Lewis, President Obama, and others. Even the old and new coverage by Bill Plante for CBS has had an eerie resonance.
Through all of it I have kept hearing one recurring phrase. When the bloody events at the bridge are talked about, it keeps being said that the changes that came afterward went forward because the conscience of our nation was troubled--even galvanized--by what had been done to peaceful marchers that Bloody Sunday.
Do we have anything like a national conscience any more? We have men and women of conscience at all levels of our society, even a few--very few--of them in politics. I think our President is one of them.
But does our country have any sort of greater conscience any more--if it ever did? If it does, what would it take to trouble that conscience enough to bring on the sort of radical changes that came after Selma?
Cops gunning down unarmed black men and boys again and again?
Stripping voting rights from the old and the poor and easily disenfranchised--the sort of rights the Selma marchers were trying to get?
Strangling the school systems and union movements that helped make America great?
Empowering a new untouchable bandit class in the banking/financial class and systems?
Punishing and bleeding the poor while giving the rich a free ride, and free reign to do whatever they want? Including trying to buy our government so they can tear it down and replace it with something that puts no limits on their behavior?
Seeing religious zealots impose their own Christian Sharia law and theocratic rule in our more backward places, one that subjugates women, punishes gays and believers in other creeds, and tries to replace science with pious claptrap that endangers life on Earth?
None of those has done the trick.
What would it take?
Is it even possible?
Is there anything like a conscience of the nation in America any more?