Warily and Wearily Walking into 2022

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Welcome to 2022. I went back and read my blog entry for January 2021. “I look forward to a new beginning.” I said. Well, that was short lived.

A very brief honeymoon before plunging back into the rancor, meanness, and just plain obstinacy and idiocy. Power grab and greed full steam ahead. I have been through a sufficient number of elections and political gameplay to know that we need both political parties as well as independents to maintain a healthy republic. Neither political party is above reproach. Together we’re better. Absolutely!

But the rules of fair play have been tossed. To sit in the bleachers and see the power that one populist leader can have is terribly frightening. His cunning at riling up the angry and “I’ve been short-changed,” “they are taking over” demographic, while at the same time huddling with the super-rich who greatly appreciated his tax breaks captures both ends of the population spectrum.

While we who are in the middle are disdained because we believe in science, medical research, a more just distribution of resources, racial and gender equality, cooperation, and voting rights for all. We are literally being “squeezed out.”

I keep retuning to Amanda Gorman’s, “The Hill We Climb.” Ms. Gorman speaks for all of us, I think, when she says, “But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.”

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For there is always light,
If only we’re brave enough to see it,
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Amanda Gorman

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Let us encourage one another to be brave enough to walk in the Light.

Bridget