On Playing Chicken

 

 What should we think of a group of less than 600 legislators who nearly shot an arrow through the heart of the “full faith and credit of the United States of America”…by playing chicken??  What should we think of some congressmen whose narrow ideology cannot or will not embrace a greater good?  What should we think of members of Congress whose holy grail is to get re-elected above all things?  What should we think of a Congress, some of whose members openly want to destroy a President?  What should we think of legislators who refuse to do their jobs and legislate, who view their colleagues-turned-opponents as “the other side?”

Wait!
But wait!  If it is the collective consciousness of the people who have sent such unworthy legislators to represent us, what does this say about us?  Are we by extension combative, power seekers, enemy creators…or are we so cynical and so inattentive that we simply do not care what our representatives are doing in our names?  England’s Margaret Thatcher pointedly said:  “It is very easy to give power away and very hard to get it back.”  Our own Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, warns that a small number of elites count on peoples’ cynicism and non participation in government to absorb more power.

Creative untidiness...
 My husband of over 30 years tramped across a broken Europe after WW II and eventually made his way to American shores.  He and throngs every year come here for a fair shake.  They come to participate in the creative untidiness of a democratic society, something most of us born here never think about.  This land still holds a fair vision of hope and possibility.  Visions must be allowed to unfold and find footprints on the ground.  Visions, like liberty, must be admired and protected, and we are inattentive to this at our peril.

 Not only deaf but blind!
If we allow unworthy politicians to play chicken in our names, they could finally succeed in pecking their eyes out.  Then we will be allowing ourselves to be led by those who are not only deaf but blind!