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- by Jackie Cilley
For more years than I can recall, early in our marriage Bruce and I began playing games at the outset of our day. Initially we played cribbage faithfully over breakfast every morning and taught our children to count by playing card games with them. Lately, we tend to play triple Yahtzee over breakfast - probably because it taxes our aging brains less and doesn't require as much strategizing as the sun comes up. We still play plenty of cards, especially cribbage, as we did last evening over pizza with our youngest son and his wife.
We're a competitive family. Whether it's darts (yes, I play a bit), horseshoes, basketball, card or board games, or simply trying to recall somebody's name (something that we seem to be playing more of these days), we'll turn it into a competition. We've taught our children to compete, to lose graciously and to win more graciously.
Our family isn't unique in this. I dare say that competitiveness is a core characteristic of our culture and our society. We like winners in our sports teams, but we love a lively competition (didn't we all breath a collective sigh of relief when our beloved Red Sox finally broke their 86 year losing streak??). We compete in our jobs for better positions. We compete in ways big and small and some so petty that none of us want to acknowledge it - who brings the most tasty or prettiest dish to a social gathering, who has the cleanest house (I'm most decidedly NOT competing on this one), who is the wittiest and on and on.
The one area in which competition seems to be changing is in the political arena. We -- both parties -- used to compete on ideas -- who could put forward the most rational plan for solving society's thorny problems. The goals, even between the parties, were not so different such a short time ago. There was general agreement on such things as don't leave the elderly on a street corner with a tin cup in their hand, don't leave individuals with mental illness, physical or developmental disabilities behind (yes, we did have our dark period of warehousing these folks, but I thought we learned something from our sorry mistakes), and educate our children well because they are our future.
This spirit of competitiveness in ideas and solutions seems to be changing in profound ways, not for the better, these days. Winning appears increasingly to be the sole objective, regardless of positions on issues. Increasingly, we don't even want to hear one another's ideas.
Of all of the disturbing things coming out of Concord these days one central theme that is most disconcerting is the unwillingness of those who represent us to listen to experts and citizens who come to testify on important legislation. Increasingly and on a daily basis, I am receiving reports of e-mails sent by legislators or discussions held with legislators in which they actually say such things as "Save your breath. I already know how I'm voting." Or, they write back to constituents and say that while they may want to vote differently, they have been told by leadership how to vote. Those in the best position to know, say their facts and figures fall on the deaf ears of those so ideologically driven that they refuse to allow in any conflicting information.
What we are seeing is not the marketplace of ideas or competition for sound solutions. Rather, we are witnessing, as other regions of the world have before us, the iron-fisted will of a supermajority to impose a dogmatic ideology in which divergent views are not welcome.
How do we fight this? Generate ideas. Insist on ideas that are fully articulated. Don't walk away from a conversation in which someone wants to give you a sound bite (i.e., smaller government gives you more freedom). Ask what is meant by smaller government (seriously, is anybody for BIGGER government?). Ask how that will solve infrastructure problems. Ask how that will address the needs of the elderly, of children in poverty, of environmental issues, of those who cannot obtain healthcare, etc., etc. Have an idea party over glasses of wine and platters of cheese and crackers. Hold an idea flea market at your place to exchange them.
Silly, maybe. A soapbox definitely. I know you came to the Alert to see the legislation that is coming up, to hear what your legislators are up to and of course, for my witty overview of the just past week and the upcoming week. That's all below. However, if we don't start a discussion of the two ton gorilla in the room we will keep coming back to fight this beast over and over again. We need a larger conversation, folks. We need some vision of what we want our state to stand for and to look like and to act like. We need a genuine conversation of how to get there (wherever "there" is). The alternative is to keep ceding ground to only one rigid approach tied to the rhetoric of lower taxes, less spending, smaller government, more gun ownership, fend for yourself getting us no closer to solutions that benefit ALL of our citizens.
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