Small Jade Sculpture Representing a Crab Grasping a Branch of Blossoming Chrysanthemum
(18th century-Qing dynasty, 1644-1911) East Asia, China

" … a future better informed if not necessarily better served …"

Following Donald Trump's election in the Fall of 2016, a small group of local progressives scheduled a time to show up at the downtown office of our United States Representative to discuss issues. They were welcomed by an admin who listened and commented, but they were denied access to their actual representative. They returned each Tuesday morning for many following months until, apparently begrudgingly, she finally deigned to offer them an audience. She invited a local conservative businessman to attend, perhaps to buffer her opposition's presence. She listened after a fashion, railed against regulations, and nothing happened. Over the following years, her presence continued to be scarce. She would conduct so-called town meetings with her constituents but only announce the meeting time and location to members of her party. She'd often visit this city without announcing her arrival, conduct business privately, and then disappear back to Spokane or Washington with her opposition none the wiser. In frustration, a group conducted a rally on the courthouse lawn with the theme, Where's Cathy? Bikers showed up to drown out the speakers.

She announced her retirement last week, and the local paper quoted prominent party members, citing her unwavering support for our region. Almost half of her constituents knew her as hyper-partisan, at best begrudgingly consenting even to engage. She was historically unresponsive as a representative except with members of her own party. She never exhibited any compunction for telling the truth, either, and would often parrot blatant lies in press releases and media interviews. She could never have been accused of harboring many thoughts of her own. She marched without apparent disagreement the straight party line through Trump's unfortunate administration. She voted not to convict him in both impeachments. She served as the antithesis of an able representative.

Our congressional district was historically much more significant than its geographical location might have warranted. Once, the Speaker of The House of Representatives, Tom Foley, occupied this seat. He was famously bipartisan and one of those politicians who always seemed to have been working for the benefit of all. Newt Gingrich and his venomous politics succeeded him, and he was defeated by one of those term-limit clowns who never ended up amounting to anything. Our outgoing representative arose from those years when Republicans ran on platforms opposed to government on so-called moral grounds. They sought to smother or drown it after shrinking it to an insignificant size. Their delusion could never have worked, but it distracted almost a generation from even attempting to do good work. They were labeled reprehensibles for a reason.

As the writing on the wall becomes more evident, many once-prominent so-called conservative senators and representatives have been deciding they need to spend more time with their families. With Trump's great final downfall looming, it doesn't take Nostradamus to notice that the tides have already turned. Anything with the Republican brand on it seems destined to take a beating, and the notion that government really should be disappearing has itself begun evaporating, and not a moment too soon. I dream of future representation that shuns overtly partisan positions in favor of actually governing. Without vision, the people tend to quarrel, and those partisans now flooding toward the exits lacked even more than a viable vision. They refused to acknowledge that we, the people, were never homogenous and that lacking opposition, any position becomes vacuous. Good riddance to our hapless outgoing representative; may she find with her family what eluded her in her public life. May we go on to a future better informed, if not necessarily better served by her passage.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz