Better Walk the Walk

This past week was President Trump’s first State of the Union address and I suppose if you want to give him credit for staying on script and sounding presidential the low bar was met. A big deal was made about his comments of coming across the aisle and having both parties in Congress work together to “make America great again.” This language is nothing new. It is a sound bite administrations on both sides pay lip service to during speeches with varying degrees of success. Given the President’s treatment of members on both sides, that has set it up to be some words that were written for him to say and nothing more.

But this is not to say that Congress is off the hook. Over just my lifetime Congress has gotten so partisan and so petty that little to anything of substance gets done. Bills that millions of people depend on, from CHIP to DACA, are held hostage so party elders can hold onto their seats of power while we, the people who elected them based on their claims that they would represent us, are left to increasing cynicism and despair. So forgive me if I listen to Joe Kennedy III’s rebuttal speech and think yeah it was eloquent and struck the right tone but I can’t put hope in it. Presidents only last for a most two terms. We are often stuck with members of Congress for their whole lives and if the past couple of decades are any judge we should be more concerned about their lip service since it will be ultimately the most damaging.

Now I am one to talk when I speak of getting past talking the talk to walking the walk. I have certainly said things that I didn’t really mean or said things and not acted upon them since it would have been hard or not, if I may borrow a phrase, politically expedient. But I am tired of this behavior in myself and I am certainly tired of it in my elected officials who continue to be a source of embarrassment and, frankly, stress as I worry about what type of world I will raise my future children in. So for all our sakes I am going to do my best to walk my own walk and see if I can go about getting our politicians to understand that sometimes you have to make hard choices to live up to your promises. And although we might not thank you right away ultimately it will be more worthy of our respect.

 

I Can’t Even: Reactive Government Policy

Obviously this is going to focus a lot on the current government shut down. Let me state right off the bat that I think both sides are wrong and this utterly stupid partisanship is why I refuse to belong to either party (I am registered independent but let’s not kid ourselves the candidates who ran under that banner during the election were awful). So don’t think for a second either side will escape this criticism. I cannot believe that something that we yell at our peers, family, students, etc. is allowed to play out on the national stage. And that is reactive government policy. There is little to no preparation for when things such as this government shutdown will happen, largely because up until the very end both sides have decided that issues are better served to be hostages rather than areas for disagreement but ultimate resolution. You all KNEW this day was coming; every few months you have passed a continuing resolution for the budget. Like you thought these issues would just go away if you yelled about the other side long enough. Like some ignorant children who have decided to procrastinate a group project until the LAST minute because you don’t like each other. Grow. The. Fuck. Up. And then you expect us all to cheer during the times when you passed one of these stupid CRs at the 11th hour like you stopped a bomb with 5 seconds left in a B level spy movie.  I want to believe in you all. I want to believe that eventually you will be worthy of my and my fellow citizens’ respect. But I don’t. Which means I will be dancing a jig when you all are fighting for your political lives in the fall. You all make me so disappointed to be an American.

I HAVE to discuss this point in a more historical context and with a more specific focus. I just finished Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial which catalogues the failure at all levels for the handling of the disaster that affected New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. This was awful to read but extremely important. I knew that things were bad then with the levees breaking and the investigations into FEMA but man that just scratched the surface. From the Bush administration to the local New Orleans government to the high levels of the corporation that was in charge of Memorial Hospital every one wanted, like Congress is doing now, to pass the blame along and not take responsibility. And OH MAN was there responsibility to be had. From no coordinated effort to get survivors out of New Orleans to not wanting to spend money on hurricane proofing hospitals to covering up morally ambiguous behavior by doctors and nurses that led to patient deaths this was reactive policy making at its finest. I don’t care if the big hurricane doesn’t happen. You spend all the money you need to ensure that if it does your citizens are safe. You have evacuation plans in place so they don’t have to worry that they are left behind. You fix the infrastructure so no one loses their homes. This might take some elbow grease and, god forbid, compromise but you get it fucking done. And clearly it hasn’t been done since Puerto Rico and Houston and California and hundreds of other places have to pay for this negligence today. So government big and small, I can’t even with you.

1. Okay, now for the actual #2.