Already Missing The General Lee

Regardless of how you came down on the side of the budget, most people are happy that the debate has ended. It was a close vote, by no means a mandate, but as in horse shoes and hand-grenades, close is good enough. The only question that remains is if the Commission can recover from the process. I do not see fences being quickly mended. Things got personal. They shouldn’t have, but they did.

I remember a time, years ago, that our local politicians could disagree and still walk away friends. Or at least friendly. What is the difference between then and now? Perhaps it is just a reflection of the changes in society over the last several decades. There was a time that we expected responsibility from our children and our politicians. That time seems to be long gone. Now we are all about excuses and an end justifies the means society. We apparently believed the Burger King commercials when they told us we could “have it our way”. The truth is that you can’t always have it your way and I can’t always have it my way. Sometime we must compromise and sometime, regardless of how much we try or lobby or want something, someone else wins.

That is simply a part of life but rather than accepting that winning and losing are the flip side of the same coin, we fight it like a fish swimming up stream. We are not gracious winners and we are not gracious losers. We live in a society that believes that every situation is BIG. We over react. We cancel television shows because a Confederate flag is on the hood of a car, even though we have all been watching that same show for 35 years. We fight each other on social media because we have a difference of opinion on health care, gay marriage, what sweetener to put in our tea…you name it. And what we do to our children borders on insanity. We no longer play for fun. Apparently the pride of our families and our future prosperity is at stake every time our children take the ball field or walk out on the court or take a standardized test or cheer, or dance in a recital. Life lessons used to be taught during those activities, they were teaching moments and helped form prior generations. The lessons that our children are learning today don’t bode well for future generations. Win at all costs. It is all about me. Push, Push Push. Run, Run, Run. You are a professional – yes, I know that you are only six or eight or ten years old.

How can we expect our children, our posterity, to grow into strong people of integrity and values if we cannot display them at home, on the court or stage or in our government? I do not have to agree with you to like or respect you. I do not have to like you to be civil and courteous to you. Those are the lessons that we were taught. The world was no picnic when we were growing up. Cold War. War-War. Civil Rights. Aids. Consolidated High School. Elected Superintendents. The list of controversial topics that litter our past is not small. But I still remember when we could shake our heads and our hands, despite our differences.

We know better. We should act better and we should be teaching our children and grandchildren better. Budgets come and budgets go. Hot topics are only hot topics until the next hot topic comes along. But we seem to be missing the bigger picture here and we had better tune in before the society we knew and the standards that we kept go the way of the General Lee.