There’s a nice passage in “Dreams” where he desribes the graffiti at Columbia – Lots of “hate speech.” So he knew that bubbling under the polite surfaces there was a lot of ugliness.

Oh lord, the old “hate is bubbling just below the surface” meme. That’s so 80s. Since nobody can find any above the surface, we have to imagine it’s below somewhere. Like the depravity the lies just under the Brady Bunch surface of American suburban life, as dreamt of in a thousand Hollywood fantasies.

I think he recognized then that American meanness wasn’t a phenomenon that was beyond the gentility – it was all up in the intellectual elites that fire up both sides of our politics.

I guess Michelle’s right then. It sure is a mean old country. At least it sure is around the faculty lounges of Columbia. Probably even meaner there than in the Kremlin. At least those guys just want cash and hookers.

He’s out to provide an example of Mind and Morality that will work on all Americans. Been doing a pretty good job…

Great little slip there Benj. You say that O wants “to provide an example of Mind and Morality that will work ON all Americans” (my emphasis). Did you mean an example that would work FOR all Americans? Or work ON them?

I think I know what you meant.