Where are the adults in the room?
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In My Humble Opinion
Jodi McDade
Some weeks it’s so easy to come up with a topic, but other weeks are oh so difficult!
This is one of the difficult weeks, but not because there is just not anything going on worth talking about. Sometimes the deadline to submit a column makes it difficult because it seems many breaking issues occur on Tuesdays. Last week was one such week with the Presidential Address to a Joint Session of Congress scheduled for that night which now makes it “old news.” So I am going to make this short and to the point.
I’m not sure if I have ever been more embarrassed by half of our elected congressional officials as I was last Tuesday night. Regardless of our differences in opinions, we are all (I hope) Americans who can find common ground on some things. We don’t have to like someone, we don’t have to support someone, and we don’t have to agree with someone, but when the president of the United States speaks, he/she should be shown the respect of civility. And more than that, the people the president invites to attend an address to the nation should also be extended courtesy and civility for the reason they were invited.
A child who has conquered battles with cancer, the parents of children killed by criminals, a young lady whose dreams were stolen by an injury from a member of the opposite sex allowed to participate in girls sports, an American finally released from Russian captivity, and the mother of a child who a school secretly supported to “transition” to “another sex” should have been unanimously respected by all elected officials present.
I so hope I am wrong that the citizens who voted for these elected officials approved of their behavior. It is one thing to refuse to stand or applaud for policies you do not approve of or support, but to refuse to show compassion for people who have survived tragedies in their lives is not acceptable. There have been times a member of the Republican Party has shouted out in disagreement with a Democratic president, but I did not think that was appropriate either. Debate and dissent have their places, but at a Presidential Address to the U.S. Joint Session of Congress is not the place.
The total division of our country was in full sight of the world Tuesday night. Just as the president stated, there was probably not one thing he could say that the Democratic Party would agree on. If he had talked about raising the benefits for Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicaid by cutting foreign aid they probably would not have agreed or approved. If he had said he wanted to increase the number of LEGAL immigrants allowed into our country by deporting the criminal immigrants already here, they probably would not have been happy.
While he is wanting to return many of the current obligations of the federal government to the states (as dictated in the Constitution), we need to understand that our citizens would be better served by legislation at a more local level, but they would not agree.
As Rodney King said all those years ago (1992), “Can’t we all just get along?” God, please save our country.
