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It would appear that Einstein was mistaken: God certainly DOES roll the dice!It is hard to imagine a more delicately balanced political situation than one tilting on the well-being of a single Democratic senator hailing from a Republican-governed state, that suddenly hangs in the balance, tipping this way and that with each day's medical report from George Washington University Hospital, as the Senate itself tilts tipsily - Red or Blue? - in close accord with the shifting medical prognosis on the survival and health of Senator Tim Johnson.
If God is NOT playing dice with the Universe, then we had better figure out what sort of message that All Powerful One is sending, with this unprecedented turn of events, for there is a strangely echoing joker's laugh about the entire situation we find suddenly thrust on us. It reverberates with previous stalemate issues, in two earlier elections. How could it have happened a successive third time, in the immediate wake of such a profoundly definitive election - as we so recently thought it to be?
There MUST be something that is expected of us . . . something in the challenge of this unique 'game of the gods' that has been given us this Christmas, ours to deal with during the coming weeks. Let's think about it . . .
A game of the gods, focused on our government, which is actually ourselves, since we elect those 'players'. So it's really for each of us, this challenge to play. We have to call the plays!
How about our Representatives starting to play straight with one another? How about getting out of the 'getting-your-own' mindset that gets the best (though really the worst) of every glad-handing, slick-handing, grease-my-hand-ing politician who has gamed his way into those halls of power? How about initiating ways of turning that around . . . of starting to play it straight, from now on, instead of playing it sleazy?
How about just Remembering What It's All About: this land of ours, this government and its co-equal parts, remember? . . . that 'piece of paper' called The Constitution, born into times when words meant what they said? It took generations of slicker and slicker politicians to learn the art of disguising the meanings of words, and looking for the loophole, and finding that clever way of interpreting a passage or two so that other things than were intended could get done: like earmarkings, and signing statements, and gerrymandering, and party-line pissing contests to show who's really in charge, when that's not really what it was supposed to be all about.
How cheap. How tawdry we've let it get! We're really sick and tired of the way you've been doing it.
There's been enough clever, sleight-of-hand, good-old-boy politics to see this once wholesome land right into the bowels of hell. Isn't it sufficient, already? How many more congressional sessions are there left to waste, before the entire inheritance has been wasted? With every single soul among us now in debt to the tune of $28,000 it's hard to imagine that there is much more inheritance to waste.
Are we entitled to any more chances than we've already had, to do it right? I hate to say so, but I fear not. When the fates or the gods put us into such tightly delicate positions like this latest turn of events - not once, but time after time, and yet again! - it could very well have become our last chance to come through on the promises.
What promises? The same ones that earlier generations have been passing along to us, sufficiently intact for the game to be played by our own generation. Would we really want this to be the end of the line? Do we care? I'm only asking.
The Game is something we don't need to ask about. It's already here.
