Was there any doubt, when reading ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, that Dr. Stockman was a giant of a man surrounded by puny people, curs nipping at his heels? When he picked up Katherine at the end of the play and twirled her around, knowing that they were going off to start a better life, a better world, it was thrilling wasn't it?
There's just nothing thrilling anymore. Even things that happen on an athletic field, or field house, have lost their luster. There is no one out there who is larger than life and as soon as someone looms above us, you can count on our 24/7 media to lay him/her low. Peyton Manning might be a great player on the field, but he doesn't spend enough time out in the community. Von Miller is a monster pass rusher, but he gets high. Johnny Manziel is, well, Johnny Manziel. Ty Lawson comes back late from the all-star weekend. Nothing is thrilling because we only seem to have the time or the inclination to focus on puny little nothings, little behavioral flaws magnified by the relentless scrutiny of the media.
It's everywhere. The Supreme Court is taking the next two months to rule on the meaning of FOUR WORDS in the Affordable Health Care Act. Four words! Is wasn't that long ago that they stopped the presses by ruling on hanging chads. Scalia and Alioto and Thomas (if he could speak) all spout Fox News speaking points about such crucial issues as same-sex marriage and how many immigration agents can dance on the head of a pin. When they do tackle a "big" case, they end up gutting the Civil Rights Act, or deciding that corporations are really people. I've walked by the Supreme Court building in Washington. I couldn't help but think that its magnificence only serves to make the small mindedness of the denizens of that place stand out even more. With the possible exception of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there "be no giants" there.
Republicans like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz whose only agenda item is to play to the selfish screaming of their base, want to wrest power from Obama and his party. But when they do come into power, when they do control both houses of Congress, all they can do is tear down, make us afraid. They have no ideas of their own, at least no ideas that anyone has expressed. Instead, they rant and rave about how issues that have already been decided by simple progress--gay marriage, internet regulation, American exceptionalism, Obama's birthplace, illegal immigrants coming to take all those jobs we prize so highly--are all going to spell the end of America as "they know it."
And the thing is that in that poisonous atmosphere it is virtually impossible to rise above the noise, the chatter. It is pretty obvious that the citizenry of this country is not well informed. They don't take the time to read about the news; instead, they listen to whichever "news" outlet is the loudest. When an individual arises out of the masses who is larger than life, we don't trust him or her. Maybe he went to a snooty ivy league college.* Maybe he's fabulously wealthy and can be seen wind surfing on the ocean off Cape Cod. Maybe he's from Kenya, a Manchurian candidate who from birth was groomed to bring about the end of our exceptional country.
Bill O'Reilly and the rest would call me unpatriotic, but I think the only thing exceptional about our country is how puny it is, how puny its wants and needs. The kind of hope that Obama started his campaign with back in 2007, is anathema to anyone who likes the status quo. This country is always less rancorous when we have a Republican in the White House because, with the exception of Eisenhower, Republican presidents only react to the rest of the world, they rarely ask us to dream.
And that is how it should be. Dreams are the province of the states; when we have a dreamer in the White House, that's Orwellian. Just ask Cory Gardner whose recent election to the Senate shows just how small minded, petty, and puny we really are.
*Yeah, yeah, I know that George W. Bush went to Yale, but he spent most of his time getting drunk in his frat house and avoiding the draft. In other words, he's a good old boy.
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