Middle School

The political establishment in this country is more akin to Middle School than it is to a serious legislative organization.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Sometimes this, purportedly, august body is reduced to game playing and name calling that you would be more likely to find on any schoolyard rather than in a world capitol.

Members of Congress act like they have never heard to the words "respect" and "compromise."  Gone are the days when Senators and Congressmen would gather to discuss and debate an issue and craft laws that served the country.

Nowadays they get embroiled in hyper-partisanship and miss the bigger picture.

They have been elected to represent a given constituency.  Stipulated.  But that group of voters is a part of the larger whole we like to call The United States. 

We decided, in 1776, to band together and create a nation that would go on, in the ensuing decades, to become one of the greatest democracies ever known.

But we are at risk of turning this country into a third rate affair.  Our infrastructure is crumbling.  Our education has gone from the best to not nearly so.  Our economy, once the strongest, is, perpetually, on the brink of collapse.  Our reputation in the world as kind and helpful global citizens has been shattered by unnecessarily protracted wars and incessant international meddling.  And our popular culture, the envy of every society, is contributing garbage rather than artistic innovation.

What has gone wrong?  What happened?

What happened is the systematic degradation of the moral fabric of this once great nation.  I don't mean porn in prime time or violence in our schools, malls and churches.

I mean the almost total absence of heroes and real leaders.  Instead of Jim Thorpe we have Lance Armstrong.  Instead Chester Nimitz we have David Petraeus.  Instead of Theodore Roosevelt we have George W. Bush.

The people who are celebrated are often the ones who have accomplished the least.  We put all of our faith and hope in television and sports celebrities and couldn't pick the Surgeon General out of a lineup.

When Latrell Sprewell can attack his coach on national TV and become the hero of thousands of boys, old and young, then we have completely lost our way.

When Martha Stewart can go to prison for insider trading and emerge from her "country club" incarceration and be welcomed back into our kitchens with open arms, then we are in trouble.

And when Eliot Spitzer can violate our trust by hypocritically engaging in the very behaviors he campaigned against and then be awarded a lucrative cable contract...well then we are all doomed.

And let's not forget Richard Blumenthal's alleged lying and Lindsay Lohan's debauchery and Chris Brown's domestic violence charges.

We fall at the feet of people who have shown a patent disregard for the law and, more importantly, the concept of integrity.

So it is no wonder that our legislators act like little children at an assembly.  They have no moral compass.  They can't tell right from wrong.  They are only out for themselves and are elected by a selfish and corrupt group of "base" (in all senses of the word...) voters whose only concern is for what serves them not the country as a whole.

Ultimately...shame on us.  We put up with mediocrity and then complain about the results.  We have abandoned excellence and settled for the easiest way in or out of any situation.

Do we demand to see the coffins as they pass through Dover?

Do we demand an accounting of the billions spent bailing out the Wall Street wealthy?

Do we demand the best in our educational systems?

No, no and no.

We sit passively by as our society slowly vanishes.  This is not about "family values", the tired and disingenuous slogan of the Right.

This is about honor, integrity and morality of the highest kind.

Without those values it will soon be over.

"Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me."

True then...true now.