Therefore, Be It Resolved

Therefore, Be It Resolved

As the New Year looms before us, we look forward with excitement
and trepidation, resolving to reform our lives.

There are different types of resolutions. There are the ones we must
carry out lest punishment ensue, like paying overdue parking tickets.
There are the ones we should do and resolve to do every year: losing
weight, keeping a budget, exercising thrice a week, or grading our
students’ papers in a timely manner.

There are the ones that would, if kept, remind us to live in the
moment so that the sweetness of life is not wasted on our
inattention: to listen to the crunch of our boots on new snow; to
listen for the lark and the nightingale; to eat cherries and persimmons
in season, and pick cherry tomatoes right off the vine; to breathe in
deeply the aroma of spring’s first daffodils and late summer
grasses, essentially, to stop to appreciate the gift of life.

Finally, there are the fanciful ones and those representing our
deepest desires like learning to play the guitar; spending less
time working and more time with our loved ones; or working
for a favorite political candidate. And though I have completed
57 years of life, and have resolved to learn to play the guitar for
many of those years, I am no closer to strumming my first chord
than I am to electing a leader who is not, in some way, a
disappointment.

Perhaps we expect too much of political candidates. We want them
to win cleanly and fairly but we do want them to win no matter what.
Only in sports are fouls and violations of the rules punished
immediately; this transparency may account for the popularity of
sports in general. Cheating in even the smallest way can cost you
the game or even the career—take runner Marian Jones or baseball’s
Pete Rose or Barry Bonds. Jones was stripped of her Olympic medals
while Rose andBonds may never see their careers crowned by
admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Early this season, when a member of the New England Patriots’
coach Bill Belichick’s video staff, was caught taping the signals
of the opposing football team, he sullied the sport and may have
earned an asterisk in the record books for his team. It was a
phenomenal season, I’m told, but at least this football non-fan
will always associate it with “Spygate.”

Politics are muddier than football in January, sweatier and
grimier than baseball in August, and the stakes are much
higher than all sports put together but we treat them like
sports. We root for our candidates, wear their campaign’s
logos, sing their party’s songs, and deify our candidate
while demonizing theirs.

We want them to win yet are disgusted by their “foul plays,”
their “selling out,” or their failure to meet our expectations.
Obama is an inspiration, then he’s not black enough. Sez who?
Clinton is polarizing? What woman wouldn't be? Clinton is a b----.
Why is she a b-----? Because some nervous men are afraid of a
woman at the helm of THE MOST POWERFUL COUNTRY IN
THE WORLD?

The late Molly Ivins, a progressive political writer from Texas, used
to say, "Politics is the cheapest form of free entertainment ever
invented." But the fun has gone out of it since “the Shrub” (her name
for George W. Bush) came to power. In his almost seven years in office,
his wars have killed almost 4000 American soldiers and demolished
our treasury, replacing it with a black hole into which we toss our taxes
and IOUs, never expecting to reap the benefits of those taxes—not
health care for the poor or the middle classes; not funds to replace our
crumbling bridges; not computers or books for our schools. Our cities
teem with the homeless who live under freeway on-ramps, and spend
their days in public libraries or any other warm public facility that will
not throw them out.

The wealthiest country in the world is cutting back on early childhood
education. We have ceased to fund art and music programs in most of
our public schools. By mandating “teaching to the test,” teachers are
forced to curtail their teaching of literature so that we are turning out
a generation of worker bees who are unfamiliar with our high culture,
as well as our folk and ethnic heritage.

As the baby boomers become the largest generation of old people this
country has ever known, the government claims that the social security
fund is in crisis; that there will not be enough money to keep us from
dying in penury.

Yet stockholders and CEOs need not worry; their profits and bonuses
will not be infringed upon.

Now is the time for us to carry out those resolutions to work for a better
political candidate and bring about a better world. The next president will
not be perfect; s/he will certainly be forced to make compromises—it is
politics, after all but we must strive to find the best one and work to elect
her/him, and to keep him/her accountable to the people.

There is so much at stake.