All politics is local, so forgive me if, just for a moment, I'm local and vocal in congratulating soon-to-be former Norwich Alderman Christopher Coutu on his successful campaign to be elected state representative from the CT 47th District. Congratulations to him and to his opponent, Representative Jack Malone, for a well-argued, hard-fought, informative campaign.
Congratulations to all of us who voted! Those who didn't need to be quiet. You have, for now, forfeited your chance to criticize and carp by choosing to not take part in our reindeer games. Feel free to listen to your crybaby talk-radio whiners with their infantile rants and, when so moved, go ahead and call them up and join in. That's why God, or Intelligent Design, created 1-800 numbers, to give you something to occupy your time. You'll excuse the rest of us if we go about our business, I hope. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
I'm happy Senator Obama was elected, but I would have been happy had Senator McCain prevailed-I'm sort of a process over product guy. One of the the things I find disquieting is how long the national races seem to go on-just me, or this time around did folks start running for President about an hour after the last Swift Boat left John Kerry far from Victory's shore?
How many and how quickly will the next crop of contenders spring up, I wonder. And for how long do you suppose is it socially acceptable to ignore them--until the Inauguration, at least? Or the first session of the next Congress? And what are the chances of all of us getting that far?
I don't really have much to say about the election yesterday because, for me, I'm not sure what changes, and concomitantly, what changes for the better. And that, when you get down to it, is what all of this is always about. WII-FM, "What's In It For Me?"
Dutch Reagan captured that sentiment perfectly decades ago and in each succeeding election, the interval has gotten smaller-now we're down to "ask yourself if you're better off now than you were four nanoseconds ago.' And we've forgotten the question by the time someone answers.
Despite the rhetoric of the last eighteen months, it really makes, and made, no difference who was elected to the office of the President-and that's not just sophistry when I assert that. The problems are the same--it's what we make of the possible solutions and how those solutions are arrived at that will define who we are and why we are here.
"Can you hear the evil crowd, the lies and the laughter? I hear my inside, the mechanized hum of another world. Where no sun is shining; no red light flashing. Here in this darkness, I know what I've done, I know all at once who I am."
-bill kenny
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