Thanks to a huge snowstorm, Washington, D.C. has come to a total standstill. Is Mother Nature providing us with a metaphor that we need to listen to?
On Saturday's New York Times website I saw these two introductions to two opinion pieces:
Regardless of what one thinks of the New York Times or its regular columnists - you don't even have to read these columns, I haven't - one can't deny the truth of the overall points that Collins and Herbert are apparently making.
Time is indeed perhaps running out on the economy – short, intermediate and long term – and the legislative branch of government, with the Senate deliriously far in the lead, has become totally dysfunctional. And it is not functioning primarily due to the dysfunctional behavior of its members. That our representatives and senators can behave the way they do - while the country is in the throes of many serious crises, all with long term implications - is absolutely reprehensible. It’s outrageous. It’s hard to believe that our elected congresspeople have slid so far. But they have.
National crisis and a dysfunctional Congress. Not a pretty combination. But worse than that, yes, there is something worse than that.
Worse than the behavior of our congresional representatives, is our behavior. Have you forgotten who sends those people to Congress? We do.
We have sent to Congress all these representatives who are behaving like immature, selfish greedy children at snack time. And we reward their behavior over and over again when it comes to election time. And please don't immediately point to whichever specific blue or red one you’d love to see gone. Our whole Congress is not functioning properly. Sure there are the leaders and the more active agitators on both sides, but the mentality and the behavior is so widespread that things have ground to a near halt under that dome.
And when the process does slowly and painfully inch forward, it has become an ugly partisan parody of how responsible representative government should operate. It is, in short, a farce.
And we the voters have let this happen. So what’s wrong with us?
Within months of the most joyous inauguration celebration we have witnessed in decades, we the voters, degenerated into our own partisan mob scene. Our representatives only followed suit. Or was it the other way around? Doesn't matter any more. The damage has been done. But it just doesn't make any sense. It's just not normal. Things couldn't have gotten so bad so fast.
I do have the feeling that our representatives were first to go off the deep end. I have a strong suspicion that the very system we have developed and allowed to become so settled in Washington has a terrible effect on people who may have been totally good people when they first got there. I once read something about Congress in a commentary somewhere: “To succeed is to succumb.”
But when did things really start to go south? When did things really start to get bitter? When did Washington really start to fail? The economic stimulus bills may not have won any beauty prizes for either process or in some people's view for results but that wasn't what did it.
No, things really started to fall apart with healthcare reform. Not war and peace. Not gun ownership. Not abortion. Not energy. Not even gay marriage. No it wasn't any of the usual readily available extremely divisive issues that can at times tear America's soul.
It was healthcare!
Maybe it's me. Maybe it's because I now live in a part of the developed industrial world that has a healthcare system that is far more equitable for its citizens (By the way, America is the only part of the developed industrial world where you won't find some kind of system like that. And no, our system is by no way perfect. We know that.) But equitable healthcare is something that we see as every citizen's right. A right, not a privilege and not a function of one's fortune or misfortune.
Healthcare has brought out the worst in America and that is absolutely incredulous. Healthcare got everyone to unsheathe and sharpen their knives. Healthcare was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Think of the way the (Congressional) system operates and the sometimes arcane rules it is run by. Think of the immense amounts of money and interests from all sides that so put a mark on the process and the outcomes. Think of large lobby groups that are well-organized and well-funded. How many Congressional representatives do you really think are currently putting our interests first, ahead of their own political interests? Give a score: on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being honestly legislating for the common good and 1 being pure political games - what score do you give Congress?
Healthcare has made the dysfunction complete. And now everything is suffering. And everybody. And make no mistake, the electorate's reaction is also dysfunctional. A Constitutional Tea Party? Please! Talk about going backwards when going forward gets too tough.
Americans should be worried about how this could happen, what it says about themselves and about what it means for the future. The rest of us around the world are also worried because, yes, we are looking for a new kind of American leadership at a critical juncture in modern history.
And all we see is a Washington that has been brought to a stand-still. And not only by Mother Nature this weekend.
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