Then I would wade into the blogs under the articles and get sucked into the maelstrom of comments, and I would have to respond to the more "egregious" comments . . . sure, like I might help the Republic withstand this assault against our core values? Then I would find that I had run out of time to post of my visits and travels. Promising to buckle down, I would once again buy a cup of coffee, get internet-ed, and prepare to update you all on my visits and travels, but that Google News button would call me forth once more into the sound and the fury and the vapid idiocy of our insidious decline into the debasement of our noble experiment in Democracy.
Really. Did you see the apology that some high school civics teacher had to send out?
"I formally apologize for assigning the debate as homework . . ."
As mentioned in the Mission Statement here, I am a citizen first and a hobbyist second. The current election season has inflamed my civic conscience, and I wonder if there is work that I need to do in this realm. Though supremely lazy, I keep feeling little pricks that suggest no option but to participate where I can to save this country from the profound stupidity that is in danger of passing as "normal" these days. It is not normal. I have been blowing my schedule all over the place to engage my fellow citizens in conversation no matter the time constraints. Some of these conversations have veered into dangerous territory, where emotions are triggered and communication is almost impossible. But I will be damned if I am not going to challenge the idiocy without any check back to reality of facts and rationality.
This summer has had some magnificent moments of figuring things out. There were engines that were not going to start until the reason for their inability to run was discovered. The discovery process required a new set of eyes, new questions, and most of all, a structured inquiry. As mentioned to many over the summer, it is as valuable to discover what the problem is not, as it is to discover what the problem is. That allows us to narrow down the bewildering array of possibilities. Sometimes, we had to look at a functional running engine to get a clue.
Same with our great Nation. We have a brilliant government and a strong Constitution, yet the country is not running well. I have to ask people why they feel the need to disparage our government and tinker with its structure when the problem is not the government. The problem is not the government. We can look at other countries to see what works, yet we choose not to. In our mechanical metaphor, perhaps we are suffering from a lousy ignition system and maybe bad gas. No need to overhaul the engine. Not yet.
This election season, which has assaulted and diminished our decency, has illuminated nothing new under the sun. People have always thought the things that are being said, the locker room talk is nothing new, the racism, the ignorance, the xenophobia, the false witness, the dasdardly claims, nothing new here bubbling up from the depths of human consciousness. The "shock" is that it is now at the surface where we can all see it. Maybe now we can fix the thing.
Colin
( I shall get to the write-ups on Blake412 (it was not a Volkswagen 412 as I was to find out, but an old address number), Globespotter, and yesterday's most interesting discovery on Manaman's Vanagon )
