For years
now I have marveled at the increasing ineptitude of our elected leaders from
both sides of the aisle and their apparent inability to effectively deal
with anything. Only in recent years have I begun to suspect that it is a
stubborn unwillingness, rather than a lack of ability, that is the engine
behind their journey to inertia. It could be said that in some areas, we
have reached the point of being inert. It took four years to bring to
justice the only criminal arrested for the 9/11 attacks. We are too close,
too numb to it all, to realize how absurd it all is.
Like many
of my friends, I love to grouse and complain. It's a good thing, too,
because we all learn something during our little bitch-fests around the
cooler. Lately though, something's been bothering me, like a little eyelid
twitch that feels like it might grow into a full-blown tic if left
unchecked. Decades of being satisfied tooling on the DMV or the FAA or
Homeland Security for being such obese, lethargic institutions, drowning in
their own pool of policy-driven paperwork, I am finding myself feeling
"still hungry" after what used to fill me up. After some serious
self-analysis, I figured out what it is. No, it's not limiting my
complaints to low-fat government agencies. I've grown weary of the
hollow echo....we all know now that our complaints, our worry for the
future, for our children, falls on deaf ears who continue to do nothing.
It's a new kind of nothing that I'm interested in.
The "new
nothing" is the nothing that the rest of us do in response to the nothing
we're used to. Read it again. I've grown tired of my own whining, and that
of my peers. Quick witted and handy with our aphoristic views and
solutions, in the end we acquiesce like the cast of Awakenings as the L-Dopa
wears off. It struck me on May 1st, the day immigrants, legal and
otherwise, hosted a national, day-long rally. "We want to get the attention
of Washington that we are an important part of the American fabric." Oh,
you're more than a piece of the fabric; you're the whole seat cover. The
rest of us regular native citizens can't organize a Saturday car wash at our
local VFW, much less a national event that may draw Washington's attention to
our shattered hopes and dreams.
In truth,
why would Washington, or any other clump of rule-makers, pay any attention
to the rest of us. We're not breaking any laws. I'm not singing the anthem
in Sicilian or German or Irish, though that is my ancestry. Like so many
others, I drag myself to work everyday, worrying about the mortgage, my
family's health and future, keeping the lights on in the house and always,
of course, wondering how many more inches of Exxon's Johnson I can
accommodate without rectal bleeding.
The
squeaky wheel gets the grease and lately, the other wheel gets gang-raped by
the usual suspects. I do feel a slight shaking in the ground however, like
a distant freight train. I can only hope that in the true tradition of
America, the ground swell will continue to grow. To listen to the
mainstream media, a term I can't stand by the way, you would think that
Americans are as diverse as ever, all wanting different things, different,
or in some cases non-existent, parameters on our freedoms. I don't see
that. Folks I talk to want pretty much the same stuff. They want safe
streets for our kids. People who hurt and molest kids must be taken off the
streets. We don't want child rape on the internet. Most people don't want
to be bothered with whatever consenting adults do behind closed doors.
We want
the government to stop wasting our money and to spend it as though they had
to earn it at an hourly wage. In 2008, I will not vote for any candidate
who does not support and plan to attain a line-item veto. For the first time
in my adult life, I will not vote otherwise. We want the government to
provide security, infrastructure and a safety net for the less fortunate.
Everything else…get out. Do you want the same folks who were the first
responders after Katrina shaping the education system?
In the
end, there are far less gray areas than we think. I do believe there is a
latent pragmatist in all of us. Let's Roll......