{"quotes":[{"text":"The long-term effect of Hillary’s loss could be more beneficial to the future of America than one might think. For if Obama’s reign placed hope in the hearts of the young and instilled in them a belief that differences must be embraced then Hillary’s crushing defeat has awakened them to the harsh realities of a hopeful indifference and raised their voices in opposition of all those ideals that would not only darken their future but the future of the entire world.","author":"Aysha Taryam","tags":["american-politics","american-revolution","barak-obama","diversity","donald-trump","hate-speech","hilary-clinton","misogyny","trump-administration","united-states-of-america","us-elections","us-elections-2016","us-politics","young-america"],"id":37665,"author_id":"Aysha+Taryam"},{"text":"My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference. What can I say to a man who asks that? All I can do is try to explain to him why he asks the question. You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don’t understand because you think of us as second-class humans. We have been passive and accommodating through so many years of your insults and delays that you think the way things used to be is normal. When the good-natured, spiritual-singing boys and girls rise up against the white man and demand to be treated like he is, you are bewildered. All we want is what you want, no less and no more. (Chapter 13).","author":"Shirley Chisholm","tags":["american-politics","have-and-have-nots","human-rights","race-relations"],"id":54123,"author_id":"Shirley+Chisholm"},{"text":"... They only trusted the wisdom of people brighter and more worldly than themselves when it was expressed in the vocabulary and style of rural idiots. In his guise as Brazenydol, he had once had a contract with DARPA to teach a team of physicists the basic terminology of tractor pulls so that they could give an acceptable explanation of omniwavelength stealth to a Congressional committee that didn’t understand tractor pulls, either.","author":"John Barnes","tags":["american-politics","consultants","funny","funny-but-true","satire"],"id":86922,"author_id":"John+Barnes"},{"text":"America isn't breaking apart at the seams. The American dream isn't dying. Our new racial and ethnic complexion hasn't triggered massive outbreaks of intolerance. Our generations aren't at each other's throats. They're living more interdependently than at any time in recent memory, because that turns out to be a good coping strategy in hard times. Our nation faces huge challenges, no doubt. So do the rest of the world's aging economic powers. If you had to pick a nation with the right stuff to ride out the coming demographic storm, you'd be crazy not to choose America, warts and all.","author":"Pew Research Center","tags":["ageism","aging","aging-population","aging-workforce","american-culture","american-dream","american-politics","american-population","conflict","demograghic-shifts","demographics","demographics-of-united-states","demographics-of-us","economics","gemographic-shift","generation-gap","generations","interdependence","population","problems-of-today","public-policy","race-and-racism-in-america","race-in-america","race-relations","recession","the-american-dream","u-s-culture","u-s-politics","u-s-population","workforce"],"id":135076,"author_id":"Pew+Research+Center"},{"text":"I'm not issuing some naïve plea for civility or bipartisanship here, or pretending that the opposing sides in this fight are intellectually equal. We have irreconcilable visions of the kind of country we want this to be: some of us would just like to live in Canada with better weather; others want something more like Iran with Jesus. My cruelest hope for the Tea Party is that one of their candidates wins the nomination for the presidency and they implode of their hubristic stupidity. But at least when I hear about them now, instead of reflexively picturing some braying ignoramus like Michele Bachmann, I try to remember that Matt [a friend of the Author's, ed] is out in that crowd somewhere, too. God agreed to spare Sodom if ten good men could be found within its walls (Abraham had to haggle him down from fifty). He ended up napalming those perverts anyway but the basic principle of sparing the sinner for the sake of the righteous, or the shithead for the sake of the basically okay, remains sound.","author":"Tim Kreider","tags":["american-politics","tea-party","tolerance"],"id":148620,"author_id":"Tim+Kreider"},{"text":"People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over...We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a new political ring or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: more confusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their tempering, their distillation, the reaction against them-.","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["american-politics","media","politics","this-side-of-paradise"],"id":188622,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"},{"text":"I've always regarded it as a test of character to dislike the Kennedys. I don't really respect anyone who falls for Camelot.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["american-politics","camelot","character","gore-vidal","kennedy-family","united-states"],"id":195335,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"I think, therefore I am an individual... Not a drone in a collective. I think, therefore I am... Libertarian.","author":"A.E. Samaan","tags":["american-politics","individual-liberty","individuality","libertarian","libertarianism","liberty"],"id":209537,"author_id":"A.E.+Samaan"},{"text":"The premise that America’s power and influence was rooted in its wealth was wrong to begin with. To the contrary, our strength comes from America’s magical stuff. It is something intangible, something invulnerable, something no measure of evil, no amount of violence or bloodshed can destroy.","author":"Rick Elkin","tags":["america","american-politics","political-commentary","politics"],"id":261078,"author_id":"Rick+Elkin"},{"text":"When libertarian sentiments take a populist form, it looks like this: a mix of anger, fear, anti-intellectualism, and fierce government hostility. Welcome to the Tea Party movement.","author":"David Niose","tags":["american-politics","anti-intellectualism","libertarian","libertarianism","neoconservatism","politics","populism"],"id":283193,"author_id":"David+Niose"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":14,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}