2020, 2021, 2022, Pogo, and Pittsburg

 2020, 2021, 2022, Pogo, and Pittsburg

By Bobby Neal Winters

Last year about this time we began looking forward to the New Year with a great deal of eagerness as if the changing of a digit from zero to one would magically make everything new.

I think we are all over that.

There were some who believed the election results would magically settle everything down.  This is an easy trap to fall into.  It’s like having a Judas goat we can put all of our sins into and chase out into the desert.

The trouble with elected officials is that we elect them.  They  get elected by getting their messages synchronised with what we want to hear.  The successful ones put together a montage image that is attractive to just enough of the electorate while their opponents are hideous to just enough of the electorate.  But in the end both sides come from the same place.

To quote Pogo one more time, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

That having been said about politics at the national level, I am much more sanguine about politics at the local level.  This I think is due to the place I live.  

It’s a pretty good place.

It was my pleasure to be present at a candidate forum at the Noon Rotary Club the other day.  All seven candidates were there.  As you undoubtedly know, we’ve got three open seats that will be filled by the top vote-getters from this slate of seven.  From these seven, I would be comfortable with a random draw of any three.

This is not just coming from what they said.  They said what most candidates running for office would say.  Just as you can put together what a football coach is going to say about the coming year (“We had a good year last year, but we lost some strong players.  The folks we are playing against this coming year have been under-rated...”) there are things all local candidates for office say.

This is coming from the fact I’ve known some of these people for many years in contexts where it matters.  The word that comes to mind is this: Solid. These are solid people with solid values, and I am kind of proud to see such a group drawn from our fine community.

How is such a fine community formed?

I don’t know for sure, but let me tell you about my best guess.  There are two pieces that have to be put together.  If you do the first without the second, you will wind up with what we have on the national level.

Step one: You need to learn how to take care of yourself.  Step two: You’ve got to help your neighbor to do the same.  Billions of people working for thousands of years have been working on the details of implementation with, shall we say, mixed results.

So next year is probably going to be a lot like this one, but I am optimistic nonetheless.  Here in our little town we have good people. 

I know I’ve become better by being among them. 

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )