Word: griefs
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...other problem with moments of silence, though, is that they are a symptom of our increasingly disjointed society. Our shared grief ought to unite us; it ought to inspire public figures to compose speeches of simple eloquence. But it is difficult to come together, and it is difficult to express grief as gracefully as Lincoln did at Gettysburg. It is far easier (and far worse) to nurse our individual grief, far easier (and far worse) to declare our grief unspeakable and to invite us instead to observe moments of silence...
...played ad nauseum in the weeks after Sept. 11—a song that was substituted for “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch of professional baseball games. It was easier than thinking of a new way to express our grief after all of this time, and easier than remaining silent, to let Katherine Lee Bates speak for us yet again...
...dark, people began to sing. We sang tentatively, the same verse over and over because very few people know the second verse that starts, “Oh beautiful, for pilgrim feet.” Mostly together, and together falling short of the high notes, we expressed our grief in a musical moment of silence: “America, America, God shed his grace on thee, And crown thy good, With brotherhood, From sea to shining...
Smith's narrative is like Adam's diagram: all the pieces seem to fit, but we never feel the animating emotion behind it. We know Alex is driven by unresolved grief and anger, but we don't feel it except at aremove, as when the inebriated hero scrawls out sardonic responses on a hotel feedback form. ("How did you find your sleeping arrangements? Lonely.") We know that Alex's search for Kitty is a spiritual quest because the titles of that section are taken from the Zen parable "Ten Bulls." Nice touch, but it would be better if we knew...
...which leaves Blair in a very strange position - alone in his party and on the world stage as the sole supporter of Bush's Iraq policy. Is the UK-U.S. partnership worth so much political grief? The days of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are long gone, and with them the hard-and-fast dictates of Cold War diplomacy. Blair has obviously decided it's better to take his chances alongside the Americans' bravado and bluster than to be folded into the Europeans' ideologically disjointed opposition. Either way, Blair had to know there would be a price...