Given the extent and severity of the people's needs, one would think
those elected representatives would suppress, or at least hold in
check, the cynicism-producing behavior common to "us versus them"
operating environments, and instead move up and focus on doing the work
they were elected to do -- namely tending to the business and needs of
the people.
And move they did, but not up and forward -- instead, down and
backward, knowingly creating the most partisan, rancorous, divisive
political environments in memory. Among other squabbling and
self-destructive problems, the majority party bickers within itself and
the minority party exhibits lock-step obstructionism. The
forward-seeking engine of the American electorate and its chosen leader
is tied to a Congressional transmission grinding between neutral and
reverse.
I note two articles contained in the Sunday, February 28, 2010, Times Argus:
one by Barry Dunsmore ("Is Our Country Ungovernable?") and a second in
the Parade section ("This is What Being Human is All About").
Dunsmore's refers to the minority party being "...devoted entirely to
making sure the majority does not have a single legislative success."
This minority position appears clearly intended to thwart the
objectives of the voting majority and to trash the needs agenda of the
American family in exchange for the agenda of the political family.
The Parade article describes American and other volunteerism in
addressing the human suffering that is Haiti. This story concludes with
a description of how a "firefighter...looked on as his brawny buddies
effortlessly worked in synch with a goateed Los Angeles doctor they'd
only just met." The story concludes with the firefighter saying, "I
wish my kids could see this...this is what being human is all about."
One wonders how close the American human need must approach Haiti's
human need before our country's elected representatives learn -- and
deliver on -- "what being human is all about."
Leo Laferriere
Waitsfield
{loadnavigation}
