I am sobered this morning.
Sobered over an election that identified Big Bird and a woman’s claim of Native American heritage as significant issues. Binders full of women, abortion, contraception and the pregnancy that results from rape being a gift from god were foremost in people’s minds.
Politics has become a business model of taking money from those that do not support you and redistributing it to those that do. It has become analogous with cigarette ads of the late 50’s that sold the glamour and pleasure of smoking while fully aware that it caused long term irreversible damage. It has become the 15 minute intro to a late night talk show.
The lack of quality education in this country is a double barreled shotgun. It retards growth and development. It also reduces our ability to understand the substantial issues of our time and rank them in order of importance.
We have serious and significant systemic issues facing our country. The deficit is the most popular to site. But our inability to understand how process affects outcome is more critical. The fact that we choose to put on blinders that prevent us from seeing we have to make large sacrifices and need to work much harder in the coming years is even more impactful than the malignant growth of our debt. These are more important because one prevents us from seeing the problem and the other prevents us from understanding that there is no “silver bullet” or single event that will correct the situation. It does not allow us to understand process.
I hope that our history of being crisis motivated and responding in unity to those crises is still in us.