We are Yugoslavia

I visited Washington years ago and stayed with a friend-of-a-friend who lived in a tiny apartment above Daniel Patrick Moynihan's house, or part of it. Cool, huh? We went to a performance of Yugoslavian dancers at the Kennedy Center -- Matt was Yugoslavian. 

The dancing was amazing and very diverse, which I commented on and Matt said, well, there's a reason for that: that the country was totally fragmented and religiously polarized and that it would fall apart the minute it wasn't held together by force.

Of course it did, brutally and genocidally. This is us, to a much greater extent than we care to think. We have never been one country but two, North and South. We are now becoming one but on what terms? On those of the South, I would say -- property and privilege.

An aside:

There was another very distant brush with Moynihan, in my life. I had neighbors as a kid, the Finns, and in an act of tolerance now beyond imagining to me they let us neighborhood youths use their small, full-court basketball set-up. We abused it, of course. 

We abused both the court and the kindness. I also house-sat for the Finns. Their older son, Chester, had been Moynihan's aide in India and had married an Indian woman. I think I met them all, Chester and family, and there was a picture or two of Moynihan around. 

Mr. Finn, the father, spoke of Moynihan's charm and how likable and engaging he was. Anyway, the Finns and some other Jewish neighbors were my introduction to a world of higher standards and accomplishment. My parents were smart and well-educated and open-minded and kind.

But there was something those Jewish families introduced me to which I appreciated later, a bigger view of everything. It also rained brisket when somebody died. The last time I ran into a reference to him Chester was still around, at a university, and a Republican.

Darn it. I will always think highly of any Finn, though, because of those parents.