Complacency

 Since January, this blog has taken on a tilt that is decidedly less political. Not because I am any less concerned or opinionated, but rather because there is less on which I feel the need to harp. The new President, a guy named Joe, seems to stir less vitriol in me. Which isn't really a surprise, since the last guy to sit behind the Resolute Desk was much like Jabba The Hut in his awfulness. 

To me.

And this is significant. Because there are folks who, I am told, feel the same way about the new guy as I ever felt about the old guy. Let's take this guy, we'll call him "Mitch," who says that he is one hundred percent focused on stopping this new administration. His words:  "We're confronted with severe challenges from a new administration, and a narrow majority of Democrats in the House and a fifty-fifty Senate to turn America into a socialist country, and that's one hundred percent of my focus." This guy "Mitch" had similar feelings way back in 2010. Coincidentally, there was a Democrat in the White House in 2010. "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president," he said back then, noting that Republicans were open to some compromise and adding, "I don't want the president to fail. I want him to change."

Which brought me back to one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite films, Inherit The Wind. Cantankerous liberal lawyer Henry Drummond is confronting his cantankerous conservative opposing counsel and friend Matthew Harrison Brady regarding the parting of their ways. “All motion is relative. Perhaps it is you who have moved away-by standing still”

Which in turn may have something to do with that whole notion of making America great again. As if our greatness can only be found in the past. Back when segregation was the law of the land, and we didn't speak of things like sexual preference, or sexual anything. Our founding fathers were writing words that were to be taken literally and any question about their support of slavery as a means to generate wealth should be ignored. And the fact that our great nation was founded on the genocide of an entire race? Hush your mouth. 

"Mitch" and his like-minded folks are grabbing at the wheel of the ship of state, looking for icebergs. One hundred percent. They may or may not want the current President to fail, but they don't seem interested in change at all. Unless that change can be created by standing still. 

So I'm not going to just sit quietly while idjits like "Mitch" take out their partisan frustrations on the attempts to push our country forward. There is far too much at stake. I am, to paraphrase the Amazing Criswell, interested in the future because that is where I am going to spend most of the rest of my life.