{"id":2189,"date":"2009-01-19T20:39:49","date_gmt":"2009-01-19T20:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2189"},"modified":"2009-01-19T20:39:49","modified_gmt":"2009-01-19T20:39:49","slug":"that_ribbon_of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2189","title":{"rendered":"That Ribbon Of Highway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ezra Klein<\/a> (who, incidentally, is one of the best progressive political bloggers on the scene) points us to this terrific video of Pete Seeger and friends singing “This Land Is Your Land” at yesterday’s concert on the National Mall. Pay close attention to the lyrics. Your grade school music teacher probably would have been shocked to realize that the original song is unabashedly political. <\/p>\n

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I’ve been thinking back to Inauguration Day 2000 and how different the mood of the country was. Those of us on the left were grumpy and dour, but I think most people just didn’t care. The recount process and litigation had left both sides looking petty and small, characteristics that don’t inspire optimism or engagement. I’ve been thinking that maybe the last eight years, as awful as they were for the country and the world, provided the only possible path to this moment. I’m no believer in destiny or fate. Much of our history is shaped by accident and happenstance. If Obama had chosen a life of academia rather than politics, I might be blogging instead about the inauguration of Hillary Clinton. If Bush had been just a little more competent, Republicans might have had their enduring majority. This was one of those rare occasions when the swirl of human events created a window of opportunity. Obama just happened to be the one to open that window. <\/p>\n

And while it’s conceivable that we could find ourselves in a continued downward spiral, I’m going to indulge in some optimism for the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ezra Klein (who, incidentally, is one of the best progressive political bloggers on the scene) points us to this terrific video of Pete Seeger and friends singing “This Land Is Your Land” at yesterday’s concert on the National Mall. Pay close attention to the lyrics. Your grade school music teacher probably would have been shocked […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-zj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}