Standing alone, photographs promise an understanding they cannot deliver. In the company of words, they take on meaning, but they slough off one meaning and take on another with alarming ease.

The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders.

Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its victims.

In the valley of sorrow, spread your wings.

I want to save my soul, that timid wind.

Everything has changed and nothing is changed.

Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnect between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling “traditions”; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician’s discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as “identities” that fit in the larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.