Walking Back the Monkey

We seem to elect people for what they are not. Obama was not Bush. Already I hear speculation about Scott Brown running for President. But what do we really know about him? Well, he's electable; and he's not Obama.

This is how it works: Because we hated Bush so much, we got Obama. Now, by all accounts, we're in a fix. Does anyone honestly believe that all our problems would just go away if we were to elect someone who is not Obama? No.

We need to walk this monkey back. We needed to do something way before anyone ever heard the names Bush and Obama. We needed to pay more attention to what our kids were learning at school. We needed to hold our politicians to account. We needed to cancel our newspaper and cable subscriptions much sooner. We needed to take more of an interest in our local civic affairs. We needed to protest against clear double standards. We needed to uphold the law. We needed to be moral. We needed to be more selective in what we were reading. We needed to defend people we agree with when they came under attack. We needed to read and understand our history and our Constitution.

There are so many things we might have done, but failed to do. In the meantime, incrementally, things have suddenly reached a tipping point. We all can feel it. Now we can no longer avail ourselves of the usual quick fix. (Throw money at it.) Multiple fires are raging throughout the house. It already threatens the children’s rooms. We'll need to incrementally walk the monkey back from the brink. And that may yet take a hell of a long time.