“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald

New America is music as schizophrenia, swinging back and forth somewhere between revivalist devotional and Jimi Hendrix shredding the Star Spangled Banner.  The brave pioneer spirit which built a nation was colonialism and genocide.  Or vice versa, depending on one’s viewpoint.  On the up side, governments and nation states will pass but the land, to date, has endured.

I often think of this haunting scene from the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (featuring “The Story of a Soldier” by the maestro Ennio Morricone) and how it captures humanity’s simultaneous beauty and cruelty.  

Trigger warning-this clip contains frequent scenes of brutality and sadistic violence.  But so does our world.

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