What happened recently in Washington D.C. is not in the news anymore. That’s because we don’t know what really happened. What happened isn’t over. It is beginning. National politics has degenerated into a competitive insanity of power lust.
Power is a more driving addiction than any chemical substance and fully endowed with all of the evils of that affliction. Those caught up in it are progressively less and less concerned or even aware of the damage they do in their pursuit of a fix. Like any addiction, by nature, it grows unstoppably, wreaking exponential spirals of damage, ruined lives, and death in its wake. It quickly breaches the confines of need, focusing obsessively on the hunger for more and more with a driving fear that it may max out short of a satisfactory level that no longer reflects the real world.
One frightening aspect of this particular addiction is that it pits these junkies against each other under a looming threat of a limited supply. They can only get their stuff from each other. Their righteous bleating of virtuous intent is no more than a desperate plea to be enabled. This has reached the level of a battle to the death and the collateral damage will be us.
This brief pause in the family drama is not an end. It is a regrouping for the next episode that, as always, will be worse. We will only survive it if we confront our denial and demand that they cease.
Harold R. Pettus
Everett
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