President Trump isn’t the only one who keeps changing his mind on positions. It seems President Putin of Russia has the same quality. This can be a good thing when the two are at crossed sabers. The ability to make a compromise is of utmost importance to the political process. When we try to do things too rapidly or leave no room for compromise in our positions, the entire process becomes detrimental to ourselves and our friends. The art of politics, like the art of diplomacy, is the art of compromise. This is an art lost to the American political scene.
The problem that we have is the grudges held by the two major parties against one another for slights they don’t even remember. When the two can let go of their grievances and compromise, we will have a functioning government again. So long as they’re bickering over remembered insults, we will always have deadlock. But there have been signs of hope. Some of the Congressmen and Senators, returning from town-hall meetings where they were confronted by angry voters chanting, “Do your job,” have begun to reach across the isle to the members of the other party. They must realize that the ones who hired them can also fire them.
If this trend continues, we may just have a government that does the job described in the Constitution for it. How long has it been since there was real bipartisan cooperation and compromise in Washington? I ask because I can’t remember. Except for the vote right after 9/11 that gave the president power to wage war on terrorists and the USAPATRIOT act, I can’t recall active cooperation since President Kennedy was in office. I was in kindergarten when he died. That is a long time to go without functional government.
I urge you to continue to press your elected officials to do their jobs. So long as they realize that it’s the voters, and not the donors, for whom they work, they may just try to be civil toward one another across party lines. Wouldn’t that be wonderful to have, a government of grown-ups who do what they were hired to do?
In another vein, Putin must be enraged at his intelligence officers. They spent all that time and money trying to influence the United States election in 2017 so Trump would be the president only to find out that Trump is not the pliant putty they thought they could mold to their purposes. I am actually excited by the fact that the Russian plot backfired.
I think we owe all the animus with Putin to the nasty way W treated him when he was in office. This is another example of unintended consequences coming back to bite you. Theodore Roosevelt said that the key to diplomacy is, “Walk softly, and carry a big stick.” Every president after him did one or the other, but not both. Now it looks like Tillerson can do the soft walking while Trump wields the stick. It may just work too.
Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.
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