False Forts

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shell never die.

Edward Kennedy
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I think the average American is a better politician than the average politician. These days Congress, the so-called representative of the people, seems to consist of two opposing gangs facing each other across an open field trying to determine who has the larger snow balls and how far they can throw them. Decisions are not made based on pragmatic values but on ideologies. An ideology is as worthless as a teaspoon when there's a mountain to be moved. The Liberals have their backyard and the Conservatives have their backyard and don't you dare cross over the fence or your neighbors will throw rocks at you.

Most of the politicking that goes on, the threats, the compromises, the concessions, the promises, is invisible to us, the People, and yet this desperate split between the Left and the Right is somehow supposed to represent how the people think.

I don't know about that. There are stone heads on both sides, even as there apparently are in Congress, but, as a Liberal I have been able often to discuss many issues with my Conservative friends, including politics and religion, without being made to feel that I was a poor, miserable, misinformed wretch who needed to be enlightened and saved, and vice versa. Maybe I'm an exception to the rule, but I don't think so.

But Congress seems to me to be a lot of grandstanding and saber rattling and it would be amusing if there weren't desperately important issues at stake. When they're in session they talk about building bipartisan support, which rarely ever happens, and when they're running for election they say that it's time for a change. The country doesn't need a change. What it needs is a conscious, intelligent, pragmatic development forward toward the goal of making the country a better place for everyone who lives here.

Congress seems to be a big family that can't get along with itself. Maybe if its way of life was threatened, as many American's lives are, the members of the family would sit up, stop being childish, lose weight (those who need to), stop fooling around and start considering ideas by their value to America and the world instead of where they came from.

The dream is still alive, the hope is still alive, the cause is still as crucial as ever and the work will always need to be done. But it won't be done by throwing snow balls.

DB - The Vagabond