Of all the educational lessons ever learned by this author, one has proven to be among the more enduring and universally true. Interestingly, it was also among the very earliest…from first grade. Sister Honor instructed: “When you point your finger at somebody else, three fingers are pointing back at you.”
This lesson has been carried with me. So wise was the Sister’s wisdom that in turn I passed the saying on to my own children who, as children are sometimes wont to do, would occasionally attempt to prove this parent wrong… leading to some interesting, if not contorted, hand signals and nuanced Clintonian interpretations of what the definition of “pointing” is. But still, Sister Honor’s axiom has held true.
And here we have Congress. When I arose this morning, I announced to my spouse that I was clairvoyant. Regarding the so-called Federal budget and debt ceiling (it isn’t, because the government has yet to keep one), I prophesized that: “The Republicans will be blaming the Democrats; and the Democrats will be blaming the Republicans.”
Thus sure of my pronouncement of things to be, and upon reading the news of the day, I took smug fulfillment in my evident abilities to foresee the future. Having some small modicum of humility (though my beloved spouse might argue that minor point), I am however forced to allow that…if the gauge were so predictable as Congressional intransigence…everyman is a prophet. We all know it.
And this brings us to finger pointing, the puffery of whiny accusations, the cries of “he said she said” bickering over a pretended Federal shutdown, a pretended Federal debt ceiling and a pretended Federal budget. Ordinary mature citizens (all clairvoyant upon this specific subject as we already allowed) need to possess that quiet understanding which Sister Honor taught so many decades ago. In the ruckus of the playground’s cacophony, a’times, stepping back from these sound-and-fury nothings, and measuring with experienced quiet can apply a salve upon skinned up egos.
Our advice to our petulant politicians is to delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). And why not? Plenty of other playground gyms are going unused as the battle over who gets to use the slide continues.
Besides, significant portions of that healthcare bill have already been delayed, put off, waived or ignored. Those are facts; facts beyond the partisan niño y niño pushing and shoving. All the hand contortions, twisting into unlikely (and frankly unnatural) shapes to avoid the three finger sanctions of Sister Honor will not resolve who gets to ride the playground slide…and certainly not before the recess bell drives us all back into schoolin’.
In fairness, if the ill-cobbled healthcare bill is not ready to be applied equally for all (and this is a known fact given its copious exclusions), then it is simply not ready to ride. To us, a moratorium here t’would be wise…if only to allow time for the cramped up hands of our finger pointing political contortionists to unknot long enough to put pencil to paper. To continue fighting over something that is clearly not ready is, well…
Sister Honor had another saying more widely known: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”