Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!
My biggest complaint with politics these days: "where are the grown-ups?"
When our children were young, our family joke was "mothers-in-law don't want their grandchildren to fall; fathers don't want their children to get hurt too badly when they fall."
When the oldest child was learning to walk, my wife's mother would scurry about behind her, hands outstretched, ready to catch her if she stumbled. I noticed that this annoyed me, and rather than cause a family spat, my wife and I decided to buy a good rug with a pad, so that when our toddler fell down, it wouldn't be on a hard floor.
If a child doesn't fall, then s/he can't ever learn when s/he's gone too far and thereby learn appropriate balance / moderation.
I'm not at all saying that people deliberately should seek out pain; however, if pain is a natural consequence of certain behaviors, then the experience of pain is a useful indicator: behave differently!
Too much of politics today, in essense, is to remove all pain from people's lives. Then we have a nation full of adolescents and whiners sitting around waiting for someone to take care of them, suckers for the next slick demagog who promises something for nothing. "Vote for me and I'll take money from someone else and give it to you instead! Why work hard, when you can get someone else to do all the work for you?"
We
say we admire people who struggle through adversity to find success; yet once they become successful, we want to tear them down.
