Time to Act

We are in a mess as a nation. Our political machinery is off the rails. Our economy is struggling through the COVID challenge, but it has been struggling through a stock market runup of prices for little reason. This is a bubble that will disappoint millions sometime soon. Employment – or rather Unemployment – is not at a good place. However, career retooling has long been needed; too many caught in dwindling careers didn’t see the writing on the wall and did nothing about finding a new career and employment niche.

So, now is obviously a time to act, pick up the beat of whatever interests you, and make a beeline to the frontline of marches, inventions, unfolding opportunities, and committing one’s self to making a difference. Yes, now is a good time to act.

But, and this is a big BUT, we should have been doing this all along. American democracy is not an automatic machine, a robot programmed to do all of our bidding. No, it is a human ‘machine’ in need of constant attention and support, so it does respond to the needs of the people. Some of those responses take years to build. It took many years to get to the moon. It took decades to respond adequately to the Sputnik challenge. It took well over a three hundred years to fix the slavery question, and still we need to fix the discrimination and racism that exists in our land.

Finding a vaccine for COVID-19 takes a year to accomplish, if then, and that victory will have been built on decades of science supporting the final conclusion to the virus. This is the face of government. It is also the face of research and development, educational advances, political adjustment to the ever evolving emergence of the new normal.

The answers do not belong in one political party – or even any political party. It does exist, however, in you and I and all of us together.

Democracy takes all of us living, acting and thinking independently and yet somehow together to arrive at new ideas and ways of handling the people’s business. This is democracy; this is uniquely American democracy.

It is not republican, democrat, green, or libertarian, or any other label handy to exploit. No party has done the right thing consistently ever. Ever. It takes all of us working together to arrive at the right analysis of the problems we face, the potential solutions we could use on the problem, or the evolution of radically new means to handle the cause, effect and result of what ails us.

So, an election is not the best time to take action. It certainly is A time to take action, but much needs to be done continually before that election if the election is to truly mean something.

Now, however, is not the time to air all grievances against each party to somehow ‘send a message’ to party leaders that they screwed up and a vote for your candidates should not be expected. This manner of living is not at all helpful. All it will do is create more havoc and chaos to distract the body politic from doing the best job for all of us.

So, choose your words carefully. Choose your candidates carefully. But also, choose the interests and hopes you have to work tirelessly for and with for many years to come. Only then will they truly be addressed and fully within our body politic. Bombing the house now will only make it uninhabitable for all. The Golden Goose will have been slain.

Surely that is not what we need?!

August 23, 2020