Our world is such a mess, we need each other, just to get through each day. Our elected officials need to govern for everyone and navigate through the madness. We need them to find a way past all the awful rhetoric and perform the duties for which they were elected. So far, it’s not going well.
On his first day of his second term as governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine banned Tik Tok from all state devices. He also vetoed a bill that prohibited cities from banning menthol tobacco and flavored vaporizer varieties. He did this, he said, to save the lives of teens and children. A noble thought. However, he rushed to sign the “stand your ground” law, and gleefully signed the law banning abortions, even in cases of rape, or incest, or when the life of the mother is threatened. His zeal for saving lives seems suspiciously slanted.
The Missouri state assembly has altered their dress code. Women members will not be allowed to wear sleeveless outfits. So much for the right to bear arms.
There are congresspeople who have openly claimed Trump won the 2020 presidential election assigned to leadership roles in several congressional committees. The new head of the judiciary committee, is key Trump ally Congressman, Jim Jordan who ignored a congressional subpoena to appear before the January 6th committee. Strange days, indeed.
America is rushing toward the federal spending limit; a government shutdown looms. The narrow republican majority in Congress has emboldened the Freedom Caucus, today’s version of the Tea Party, who are willing to ruin the credit standing of the United States government for a spot on Infowars or Fox Television. Whoever said politics makes strange bedfellows never saw Fox and Friends.
In his shameless pursuit of the coveted role as Speaker of Congress Kevin McCarthy exchanged everything for the gavel. Congressman Matt Gaetz told CNN he ran out of things to demand in exchange for his “Present” vote. He had already made clear he was never voting for McCarthy. One of the concessions Gaetz demanded and received was the rule that one member of Congress, Democrat or Republican bring a “motion to vacate,” which forces a vote to recall the Speaker. Any hint of moderation will suffice. It has come down to the point where the next thing, no matter how minute could cause a meltdown. It is a government on the brink of disaster.
In his book, The Great Mortality, An Intimate History of The Black Death, John Kelly compares Post Boom Europe of the late 1200s and early 1300s to “a man standing up to his neck in water. Drowning may not be inevitable, but the man’s position is so fraught, even a slight rise in the tide could kill him.” Somehow, that seems an appropriate description of our current state. We are willing to find every issue that has popular support and exploit it for political gain. Cooperation is attacked as weakness; bipartisanship is viewed as a sign of intellectual infirmity.
America needs stability, time to find answers to a world growing more dangerous every day. What it has is complete disfunction, and time is slipping away. Sometimes it seems hopeless. But 2024 is coming, and maybe we can last that long.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
