Frustrated by all the things that fall apart in my old house, I stand there dumbfounded by a vintage glass door knob that keeps falling off the back side of the bedroom door.
I plop down by my desk and try to recoup. On my desk is an unruly stack of papers too useless to keep but too curious to immediately discard. I call it my pile of probable impossibilities and total irrelevancies. Perched on top is my glass paperweight with a little Dutch windmill inside. The pile consists of dated coupons that seemed worth keeping to fulfill some "what if" situation, some news clippings of onetime interesting stories, and political mailings from my government reps that piqued my curiosity. And some other stuff that I dare not contemplate without Lysol and rubber gloves.
So I picked up my pen and decided to joust with an issue or two. Why I ask, do my local, state and federal reps feel it is necessary to mail these things to me? Obviously they want to keep me informed of all the great stuff they are doing to benefit me and my fellow constituents. They certainly want to keep their names and faces out there lest I forget them as we approach an election. Frequently these mailings include pre-scripted questionnaires with questions that leave little room for comment and almost no room for dissent, the answer-options worded to elevate my rep’s opinion and diss those of an opponent.
But did you ever notice that never once in these mailings will one of my elected reps praise an idea or legislation put forward by a member of the other party? The closest thing to that probable impossibility is when they tout a bill that they co-sponsored with someone from the other side of the aisle. This is labeled as "bipartisanship," but they make it seem like they had to reach across the heavenly divide between heaven and hell and pull the other to the light.
Why can’t they just come out and say, "Hey, Johnny Democrat had a good idea and I’m glad we got the guy to sign it into law." Or "I think the Republicans were right on the money with the way they approached that problem. I’m all on board with that one!"
Too often it seems to me that the other party is demonized. "Democrats are the spawn of Satan!" Or the Republicans "are pompous, self-righteous blowhards with bursitis issues in their shoulders from constantly patting themselves on the back."
No wonder most folks tune this out, or if a person is overly invested in "the game," they screw themselves into the ground with indignation. But there might be a solution ... money. Better pay for cooperation. Enhanced tenure. Promotion to committee chairmanships based on collaborative efforts.
"How will THAT work?," I hear you say. Too much invested in the way things are. Too much insecurity that if we credit others’ ideas we might lose our place in the halls of government. Too much effort has already been expended for anyone to change the way the game is played. After all, the current system of mud-slinging has been proven to work, over and over. Because it is much easier to appeal to what people feel about an issue than to appeal to what they think or know.
Probably impossible. So I say to my elected reps, keep mailing me all those pamphlets and such. Let’s give the Postal Service some needed work and keep those 600,000 employees with family-supporting incomes busy.
I grab the edge of the pile of impossibility and irrelevance and flip through a couple inches of papers. Lots of stuff there to tickle my irritable bone. Guess I won’t cull it just yet.
Just don’t get me started on the overuse of the word "justice" in newscasts coming from our local TV stations.
And never ask me about old men and typewriters and their hoarded pile of stale opinions. Totally irrelevant.
The door knob can sit there for a day or two, I reckon. I’m not using that room anyways. Think I’ll just put on my old headphones, crank up some tunes ... oh, that’s a good one. "Driving Wheel" by Foghat. Good old-fashioned roadhouse rock. So I’ll just sit here a minute and ponder some imponderables.
Like stuff falling apart in our old government — I mean my old house. I love the structure itself but all the sticky problems seem to elude easy solution. Don’t want to invest in a major renovation, but it shouldn’t have to be this hard after all these years.
(Dave Tomsyck lives in Oconomowoc.)