In kicking around the blogs today, particularly the leftie blogs, I’m seeing a word that is often used and usually misunderstood, or at least ill-defined in context.
The word is “Change”. There seems to be an almost universal cry for it, that seems to run independent of party lines. Amongst those who truly do not represent change, but rather represent more of the same, such as Hillary Clinton, (who after all was with us back in 1992, the cry for change seems the loudest. ) Perhaps this is an indication as good as any were going to get that the cry for change is not a genuine one, or at least is being misrepresented in some quarters.
When so many people and groups of so vastly different a political and social point of view are all screaming for change, it’s a sure bet that they are each defining change differently. And why would that not be so, given the nearly 50/50 polarization in our political system just now? Each side is asking for change, but each side is regarding change as the removal of the other side from the equation. For truly meaningful change to occur, it seems to me that we first must agree on what constitutes change within the context. Given the 50-50 split, I spoke of that agreement does not seem likely to occur. indeed, it seems to me that the only change that is guaranteed to occur is that President Bush will no longer be in the White House as of this time next year. The question of whether or not that change will be a positive one is yet to be seen.
There seems a great deal of historical misunderstanding about the word change. As an example. Most of the cries for change seem to assume that change is always a positive when it happens. Yet historical fact remains that change, particularly when made for it’s own sake is around half the time, not a positive thing.
And perhaps before the cries for change get much louder, we should take a quick assessment of where we are today. after all, if things are in fairly decent shape just now, there doesn’t seem to be a reason to change, other than to quiet someone’s call for political power. The economies in fairly decent shape; The press’ misrepresentation of the facts notwithstanding our image in the world has been doing rather nicely, thank you; our standard of living is second to none in the world today, as is our health care; seems to me that any change of those situations would be a negative.
Forgive my skepticism, but I’ve seen this happen too often before. I would prefer to know where the engine of change is going to before I climb on board this particular bandwagon.