I'm getting off to a slow start this new year. I've been looking around the last few days, perusing some headlines and reading a few pieces on the internet, searching for something, well, to write about. I'm not finding much that gets me excited enough to comment.
The 2012 political season is fully underway with the Iowa caucuses last night, but for whatever reason, every thing I hear or read comes through like the adult voices in every Peanuts cartoon ever made. (Here's a fun question: what's the onomatopoeia for the sounds Charlie Brown's teacher makes?) Perhaps I've become so jaded with the political class that everything they say seems bereft of meaning or sincerity. This is dangerous, actually, because the fruit of such is apathy at best, deep disillusionment at worst.
I can't shake the image of the final scene in the book Lord of the Flies, when the naval officer arrives on the island, restoring reality to a horrifying devolution of an adolescent social "experiment." Is there a grown-up who can restore proper order, and begin to turn this nation around toward a more sustainable, formidable future, knowing all the while that pushing a society to grow out of its adolescence is a generational task? I'm not looking for a political "savior." Hardly. I am looking for leaders at every level with the courage to face the short term chaos, but with the vision for the long term viability of this great nation.
So far, the only ones that seem to come anywhere close to that ideal have chosen not to pursue office.
Which leaves me only with an oft used onomatopoeia: Sigh.
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