Monday, June 23, 2014

Nattering Nabobs of Negativism


When I try to reason how our great country’s political state has come to represent nothing more than Spiro Agnew’s “Nattering Nabobs of Negativism” I can only conclude that it is the quest for personal power that is driving it.  One path to power is “divide and conquer” .   When I listen to politicians, I don’t hear of solutions, I hear blame and anger.  A well known debating devise when reason won’t do, is to hurl insults, create fear and call names.  Is this what is really happening?  Or has the media found that the only way to get customers is to hone in on the divisive?
  I hear a lot about how the baby boomers are responsible for the mess we’re in, but hear nothing at all about our accomplishments:  You can see blue sky in Pittsburg.   The Cuyahoga River and River Rouge are no longer fire threats and actually produce fish that people are eating.  Bald eagles and Canadian Geese are abundant.  Most poor people in this country would be considered rich in much of the world.  I see no black smoke coming out of stacks,  and we are closer to energy independence than we have been in a long time. 
The key to these gains come from a “Unite and Prosper” philosophy that seems to have left the country.  The 13 colonies united to win the Revolution despite drastic differences in belief and situation.  The greatest growth this country has ever seen was after WWII when we united with our enemies and helped Japan and Germany turn into great allies.  The family value that allowed this to happen is called “Tolerance”.    Tolerance allows us to learn other viewpoints and get different perspectives on situations that we wouldn’t get otherwise and that is how problems are solved. 
We’ve delegated our power to special interest groups that are bureaucracies and unfortunately bureaucracies don’t die.  When they have achieved their means they must find or create another cause to keep their jobs. Many of these don’t hold water when held up to the light and unfortunately, because they were our cause we fail to recognize the change.  The gay marriage group in Minnesota is still going strong despite their win.  The pro lifers keep going after Planned Parenthood even though Planned Parenthood has prevented many more abortions than they have carried out and abortion numbers are even with estimates of when it was illegal.[1]  I still want to know which suicidal Federal employee is coming to your door to take your gun away?   
 The divide and conquer group think that in order for one group to gain, another has to lose.  This is not the American way.  As President Kennedy stated “a rising tide raises all boats”.  When we look at who we are going to vote for, I feel we should be looking to those who will unite us in what we all wish for; security, prosperity, love and happiness.  We should reject those nattering nabobs of negativity that don’t have any solutions other than vote for me.  The “loyal opposition” should be working to make a better country and world and not be solely focused on gaining power by any means.  Most of the vitriol can be reduced to bureaucracies whose leaders have decided their personal survival is more important than their mission.  We need to find a way to correct this.



[1] Guttmacher Policy Review, Spring 2014, Volume 17, Number 2
 

No comments:

Post a Comment