Every time I think me and my generation have progressed in every way from the life my parents led, I look at the state of our politics, from sea to shining sea, and I don't talk so loud or walk so proud.
We could, in the course of the next forty-eight hours have, again, a shutdown of the federal government as we did in 2013 (as a Federal employee not included in the Pay Our Military Act, I stayed home until the morning of 17 October and felt like crap for every waking minute of those seventeen days because my employer had decided I "wasn't essential to our mission"). As you may have just realized reading that, I took it personally and still do.
The consequences for a temper tantrum orchestrated by one sect (I chose that word deliberately) of one party at the national level seeking to defund the Affordable Care Act had consequences for those residents who are/were members of it locally. We in Norwich that year were electing a Mayor and a seven-person City Council. You might be able to guess for whom I could not bring myself to vote.
It may happen again, this time over funding for Planned Parenthood, and it may be a shape of things to come as the rhetoric for a Presidential election almost thirteen months away is already so red hot, I wouldn't touch some of those running with a barge pole. Like this candidate. Glad I own a Dell computer.
It's easy to spot an office-seeker who has no experience in any aspect at any time of elected government and who wears that as some sort of a badge of honor. Being ignorant of how something works isn't a sin; being proud of your ignorance is arrogance, though, and that is one of the seven deadly sins, Pride.
Standing on principle can be done without holding the machinery of governance hostage. My disquiet isn't just with Ms. Firorina or the Canadian-born Texan who wants to eliminate anchor babies, but, rather, with those on the flanks, in both national parties, of the political center. They have a singular focus and insistence in refusing to hear nuance in the language of leadership or to see any shades of gray but only black or white.
They are the embodiment of Churchill's warning that a fanatic is someone who cannot change the subject and who will not change his mind. The last thing we need on a very crowded planet is more people with open mouths and closed minds.
-bill kenny
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