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A New Kind of Nothing

For years now I have marveled at the increasing ineptitude of our elected leaders from both sides of the aisle and their apparent inability to effectively deal with anything.  Only in recent years have I begun to suspect that it is a stubborn unwillingness, rather than a lack of ability, that is the engine behind their journey to inertia.  It could be said that in some areas, we have reached the point of being inert.  It took four years to bring to justice the only criminal arrested for the 9/11 attacks. We are too close, too numb to it all, to realize how absurd it all is.

Like many of my friends, I love to grouse and complain.  It's a good thing, too, because we all learn something during our little bitch-fests around the cooler. Lately though, something's been bothering me, like a little eyelid twitch that feels like it might grow into a full-blown tic if left unchecked.  Decades of being satisfied tooling on the DMV or the FAA or Homeland Security for being such obese, lethargic institutions, drowning in their own pool of policy-driven paperwork, I am finding myself feeling "still hungry" after what used to fill me up.  After some serious self-analysis, I figured out what it is.  No, it's not limiting my complaints to low-fat government agencies.  I've grown weary of the hollow echo....we all know now that our complaints, our worry for the future, for our children, falls on deaf ears who continue to do nothing. It's a new kind of nothing that I'm interested in.

The "new nothing" is the nothing that the rest of us do in response to the nothing we're used to. Read it again.  I've grown tired of my own whining, and that of my peers.  Quick witted and handy with our aphoristic views and solutions, in the end we acquiesce like the cast of Awakenings as the L-Dopa wears off.   It struck me on May 1st, the day immigrants, legal and otherwise, hosted a national, day-long rally.  "We want to get the attention of Washington that we are an important part of the American fabric."  Oh, you're more than a piece of the fabric; you're the whole seat cover.  The rest of us regular native citizens can't organize a Saturday car wash at our local VFW, much less a national event that may draw Washington's attention to our shattered hopes and dreams.

In truth, why would Washington, or any other clump of rule-makers, pay any attention to the rest of us.  We're not breaking any laws. I'm not singing the anthem in Sicilian or German or Irish, though that is my ancestry.  Like so many others, I drag myself to work everyday, worrying about the mortgage, my family's health and future, keeping the lights on in the house and always, of course, wondering how many more inches of Exxon's Johnson I can accommodate without rectal bleeding.   

The squeaky wheel gets the grease and lately, the other wheel gets gang-raped by the usual suspects.  I do feel a slight shaking in the ground however, like a distant freight train.  I can only hope that in the true tradition of America, the ground swell will continue to grow.  To listen to the mainstream media, a term I can't stand by the way, you would think that Americans are as diverse as ever, all wanting different things, different, or in some cases non-existent, parameters on our freedoms.  I don't see that. Folks I talk to want pretty much the same stuff.  They want safe streets for our kids. People who hurt and molest kids must be taken off the streets.  We don't want child rape on the internet.  Most people don't want to be bothered with whatever consenting adults do behind closed doors.

We want the government to stop wasting our money and to spend it as though they had to earn it at an hourly wage.  In 2008, I will not vote for any candidate who does not support and plan to attain a line-item veto. For the first time in my adult life, I will not vote otherwise.  We want the government to provide security, infrastructure and a safety net for the less fortunate. Everything else…get out.  Do you want the same folks who were the first responders after Katrina shaping the education system?

In the end, there are far less gray areas than we think. I do believe there is a latent pragmatist in all of us.   Let's Roll......