Fix It?

Feb 6, 2020

Big week for Washington, right?

On Tuesday, President Trump delivered his third State of the Union address.

Depending on which side of the political aisle you inhabit, it was either: a) an uplifting report on what’s right in the Republic, or 2) the most divisive State of the Union -ever.

Having seen and heard more than a couple of these, I’d have to say it was neither.

It was better than some, but fell short of others.

Today, however, it seems everything has to be extreme. Short of that just isn’t adequate.

As outdoorsmen and women, we should know better. We know not every animal harvested is one for the record books. Heck, we accept the fact that every hunt won’t end with a harvest. But we go anyway.

We understand life. And life usually runs on a schedule other than ours.

Life requires balance. Equilibrium. A sense of proportion in proportion to the situation.

You can’t have mountains without valleys any more than you end droughts by thinking of water.

Wishing things different doesn’t change them. Neither does whining, screaming at the sky, or refusing to accept any result you don’t like.

Yesterday, the Senate saw no reason to remove the President of the United States, despite the House of Representatives impeachment vote.

Consequently, the latest contrived melodrama ended with the bang of a gavel and the whimper of the losing side.

The ending should have come as no bigger shock than the sun setting yesterday and rising again this morning. (If it didn’t, stop reading here -we’ve got a larger issue).

Instead of our applauding or deriding what we heard and saw during the entire tawdry affair, we should be shaking our collective head over the state of government.

Despite what you’re seeing, true governance isn’t sports.

Governing is about making the best choices for the most people, not about preserving power or reversing elections.

Those who govern work for…wait on it…US, not the other way around.

So, we need to be about fixing the mess.

And before you begin to say it’s not your mess, stop.

It IS your mess.

It is MY mess.

It is OUR mess.

WE made it.

Liberal or conservative, pro-gun or -anti, vertical or horizontal bow, whatever signifier you use, we all participated in making this mess.

We - as in “We, the people of the United States of America” elected this dysfunction bunch of otherwise unemployable officials into offices that belong to us. They’re supposed to be on loan to them while they do our work. It’s not supposed to be a 30-year career for anyone.

But we allowed them to create a system under which they are exempt from the rules they pile on the rest of us.

So, whether you like it or not, it’s up to us to fix it.

And it will take time, energy and sacrifice.

That’s a fact. Hopefully, we’ll be able to repair the tattered fabric of our country short of another civil war or a modern American remake of the French Revolution.

But the longer we wait, the more drastic the remedies become. We can agree to disagree on some things, but we’d better get busy on solving this problem before the problem solves us.

—Jim Shepherd