{"id":2983,"date":"2009-08-24T22:47:11","date_gmt":"2009-08-25T02:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=2983"},"modified":"2009-08-24T22:47:11","modified_gmt":"2009-08-25T02:47:11","slug":"sf-authors-say-smart-things-stross-on-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/24\/sf-authors-say-smart-things-stross-on-mercy\/","title":{"rendered":"SF Authors Say Smart Things: Stross on mercy"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The subjects vary \u2014 crime and penal policy, healthcare, don&#8217;t get me started on foreign policy \u2014 but there is an ideological approach in America that is distinguished by one common characteristic: words and deeds utterly lacking in the quality of mercy.<\/p>\n<p>There is a cancer in the collective American soul \u2014 a mercy deficit that has in recent years grown as alarmingly as the budget deficit. Nor is it as simple as a left\/right thing: no political party has a monopoly on merciless behaviour. Rather, a creeping draconian absolutism has cast its penumbra across the entire arena of public discourse, tainting every debate, poisoning and hardening attitudes across the board. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:right\">&mdash;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.antipope.org\/charlie\/blog-static\/2009\/08\/merciless.html\">Charles Stross<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">The subjects vary \u2014 crime and penal policy, healthcare, don&#8217;t get me started on foreign policy \u2014 but there is an ideological approach in America that is distinguished by one common characteristic: words and deeds utterly lacking in the quality of mercy. There is a cancer in the collective American soul \u2014 a mercy deficit that has in recent years&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/24\/sf-authors-say-smart-things-stross-on-mercy\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,20],"tags":[257,133,157,122],"class_list":["post-2983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","category-people-say-smart-things","tag-authors","tag-politics","tag-smart-things","tag-usa","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-M7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2984,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2983\/revisions\/2984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}