Why Macedonians Get No Respect

By David Edenden

I have been trying to think of a rational reason as to why civil rights for ethnic Macedonians in Greece is on no one's agenda and yet the everyone pays attention to Greek concerns about Macedonia, including politicians and journalists who should know better. I have come to the conclusion, there is no rational reason, but below are are three insights.

How Many Times Can a Country Lose its Innocence?:
Katha Pollitt, The Nation, BLOG | Posted 10/08/2007

"I've been thinking recently about the many ways in which we conceal from ourselves the truths we know we know.

At the "Shocked, Shocked Conference" at NYU on Saturday -- the subhead of which was the comical/exasperated 'Just how many times can a country lose its innocence?' -- the Yale historian David Blight gave a riveting talk about how over the second half of the 19th century the Civil War became memorialized as a conflict between 'two right sides ' -- Union and Confederate-- and 'reconciliation' came to mean focusing exclusively on the valor of the soldiers in both armies. Slavery? Black people?

Neither fit the narrative of reuniting North and South. For that, the causes and purposes of the war had to be obscured, the past -- the real past -- forgotten. The slaveowner and the slave dropped out of the public story, the soldiers in blue and gray became the star players. In this way, the country could bind up its wounds and move on triumphantly without having to confront the reconstitution of white supremacy in the South, or Northern racism either.

Napoleon quipped that the winners write history, but until the civil rights movement, the history of the Civil War was largely written by the South."

Media Matters - Radio Nowhere
Eric Alterman, Altercation, October 9, 2007

"Facts" are not useful in isolation and hardly anyone, who is not a professional in some way, has the time or expertise to place them in the complex context in which they operate. This is what Walter Lippmann meant when he spoke of the gap between 'the world outside' and the 'pictures in our heads,' something with which his most important and influential critic, John Dewey reluctantly concurred.

Both Side Now
Joni Mitchell See (Youtube)

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all