Ron L

“To some, the precariousness of the current moment seems frightening, and yet this uncertainty has always been there. The liberalism of John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, or Václav Havel never promised anything permanent. The checks and balances of Western constitutional democracies never guaranteed stability. Liberal democracies always demanded things from citizens: participation, argument, effort, struggle. They always required some tolerance for cacophony and chaos, as well as some willingness to push back at the people who create cacophony and chaos.”
― Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

“Time is kept and curated in different ways by trees, and so it is experienced in different ways when one is among them. The discretion of trees, and their patience, are both affecting.”
― Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places

“So many of our stories about nature are about testing ourselves against it, setting ourselves against it, defining our humanity against it.”
― Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights

“The Republicans have moved so far toward a dedication to the wealthy and the corporate sector that they can-not hope to get votes on their actual programs, and have turned to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there, but not as an organized coalitional political force: evangelicals, nativists, racists, and the victims of the forms of globalization designed to set working people around the world in competition with one another while protecting the privileged.”
― Noam Chomsky, Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power