Quote from my reading: America

Simon Morley meditates on whether he should let Julia stay in the twentieth century where she has come from the year 1882: “No, I won’t let you stay here. Julia, we’re a people who pollute the air we breathe. And our rivers. We’re destroying the Great Lakes; Erie is already gone, and now we’ve begun on the oceans. We filled our atmosphere with radioactive fallout that put poison in our children’s bones, and we knew it. We’ve made bombs that can wipe out humanity in minutes, and they are aimed and ready to fire. We ended Polio, and then the United States Army bred new strains of germs that can cause fatal, incurable disease. We had a chance to do justice to our Negroes, and when they asked it, we refused. In Asia we burned people alive, we really did. We allow children to grow up malnourished in the United States. We allow people to make money by using our television channels to persuade our own children to smoke, knowing what it is going to do them. This is a time when it becomes harder and harder to continue telling yourself that we are still good people. We hate ach other. And we’re used to it.” (1970)

Time and Again. Jack Finney, p. 378.