Dear reader, come with me on a journey to the past which holds a moral for our journey to the future.
The great ship Titanic was sinking. On deck a doomed string quartet was serenading
the passengers who had been unable to get into the lifeboats, and who were also doomed.
All the ship musicians had vied for the privilege of playing in that final quartet.
They imagined something noble in that symbolic gesture. But their playing could have no effect on the events to come, and history bestowed no fame upon them.
Now let us visit the congress of the United States. The members are engaged in vicious partisan competition with the end that their party will control congress after the 2010 elections. That control will be purely symbolic, because congress will
be in the grip of events beyond their power to affect. The difficulties they will face---two winless off budget wars, an economy in shambles with unemployment hovering around 10%, our military in tatters, and our standing in the world severely diminished. It will be the responsibility of the controlling party
to deal with these intractable problems, and after a brief interval they will be blamed for the failures which they inherited. So it has been with Obama, and so it will be with the Republicans if congress returns to their control.
The solutions to our difficulties will be very painful, will impact
disproportionately on various sectors of our society,
and will reign in the power of the vested interests that now control congress.
Resistance to change will be so fierce that only a unified,
non-partisan approach by both parties will succeed in reversing our decline.
If each party continues to fiddle to its own music they also will founder with the
rest of the nation. The trend of world events is not in our favor. Our politicians
must at last see where the broader interests of the nation lie, and get at them.
If not now, when?
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2 comments:
To The end the band on the Titanic played and played to their common doom and no one was really listening.
Today in the middle of our Nation slowly sinking into a morass, our Representatives are arguing and fighting and playing game after game of compromise and shortsightedness.
Yes indeed we need as you say “a unified non partisan approach to reverse our decline”.
Let us man the boats without further ado and in unison before the US ship sinks.
There is more than a touch of Machiavelli in the Repub. strategy.
If thy can make Obama a failed president that improves their chances in 2010.
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