Every day, in hundreds if not thousands of ways, good, common-sense people like Ms. Rosett offer ideas so eminently commonsensical, so appealing in their simplicity, and so compelling in their dramatic departure from old, stale, status-quo thinking, that it underscores how a revolution needs to take place in people’s relationship to their government. First thing we do is throw all the bums out, clean sweep, even if some genuinely good people are lost. Then, term limits, absolutely term limits. Then inducements and incentives to encourage regular folks to run for office. Then a PSA ad campaign to remind voters that voting-in their neighbors can hardly result in government worse than that which has been inflicted upon us by the pros.

Here, in mid-February, with cold and gloom still the order of the day, with close to six months of economic crisis — crisis! — our immediate frame of reference, and with few if any signs of spring beyond the anticipated blossoming of crocuses, the psyche of Americans is at a lower ebb than I can remember in my 60+ years of life. Every institution in which we once belived has failed:

Government has failed, repeatedly, and ongoing.

Our financial system has failed, repeatedly, ongoing, and grossly.

Our educational system has failed, manifestly.

My own Roman Catholic Church has failed, and in the most shameful way.

And our overall culture, far from aspiring to higher plains, seems evermore to be descending into a neo-primitivism.

By God, I’m depressed. And what’s not to be depressed about? Except for the occasional evidences of bright-light, common-sense ideas like those from Ms. Rosett?

I should do more, much more, than just respond to postings, and fire-off angry e-mails to my jokes of political representatives. I should become really engaged, maybe even run for office. I really should; I could hardly be worse than the putzes there now. I don’t really want to. Like most people I really don’t want the responsibility, and I damn sure don’t want the BS that comes with campaigning, and governing. But things are getting so bad that, with a little inspiration, and perhaps with a bit of divine intervention, I might decide to get off my dead ass and actually try to do something, instead of just whining about how things are.

In any case, thank you, Ms. Rosett.

Chuck Vail
Glenolden, PA