Emis, 5771

(and yes.. Emis means 'truth'....)

In this the year 5771 (I think), the decision I have made is to find some truth somewhere. You might think this is easy. Surely there is truth in nature. And there is truth in our love of family – but that’s a bit esoteric. I’m kind of looking for people, who we trust to make decisions about our lives, and find some truth in what they say. But that’s not always easy because no matter how frustrated you feel about finding a message, sometimes you not only can’t discern if they are telling the/a truth, because you can’t understand a damn thing they say.

Take for example the Tea Party jargon. It begins with a simple premise; as a candidate or a member of the party you want to “ rid the country of the politics of destruction.” That’s what O’Connoll, the Tea Party nominee for Joe Biden’s Senate seat said at her primary victory speech. Which would be fine, if only we knew what the “Politics of Personal Destruction” means. And I think that is exactly the point. People are so frustrated about what appears to be the lack of leadership (not only in the White House – which simply needs to kick some Republican tuchas) but everyone from small town councils to the Congress—both houses.

We want too much to believe that someone else can make a difference for us, that we will listen to whatever they say, make it what we want it to be, and then have disappointed expectations when it simply doesn’t happen.

If you listen to what the newly created Tea Party is saying, you will find that it is no different from what most of the Republican Party is saying, but they are doing it without the endorsement of Sarah Palin. You would think the woman would be greatful to the Party for having dressed her up, taken her out of obscurity, having made her a national figure. But alas, when you have an ego the size of the State you once governed, you never think anyone did anything for you. Further, you want to be a big fish, no matter the size of the pond – like the Tea Party. And you certainly don’t want anyone to understand any message, because that would limit the kind of colorful rhetoric you use to get attention. There’s no truth in the rhetoric because there is no message –just clever phrases that will always elicit some response from the audience.

For me, the creation of a Tea Party, or any organization that defines itself by what they are not –Democratic or Republican – might win political races but never succeed. One lesson I learned working in two Presidential Administrations (other than duck and cover), is that unless you know how to work the bureaucracy, nothing can change -- because you have to be inside to actually understand how to get things done. You might call that the politics of personal destruction, I call it common sense.

Any person who wants to be a leader, or make a difference, cannot pick and choose from a menu of options. The Government is not a Chinese restaurant, one from column A and one from B. For example, you cannot want Government out of your life but then accept Medicare or a social security check.

In my never ending quest to figure out if candidates are saying anything truthful or even remotely sensible, I continue to get back to a place where I think we all need to take some responsibility for ourselves, which we do by voting. We also need not only to do some discriminating listening, we have to ask how something is going to get done – just how will the job be accomplished? The government can’t do everything for everybody –unless we stop policing the world. But we wouldn’t want that anyway. What we need is a definition of the words used by the people who want to run the government, so that we can understand where we are going and how they want us to get there. And that is Emis. We're just sayin'....Iris