Garrison Keillor on a Great Nation Immobilized

He, as he often does, says it best…
by Charlie Leck

Here is about as much of Garrison Keillor’s latest column that I can get away with quoting, but I want to tease you into reading it all. You can find it here. Whatever you do, read on to the final paragraph, that begins: “If man is pushing the planet toward extinction,…”

“We are self-centered, short-sighted people, intent on comfort, averse to sacrifice. We know this. Knowing it does not empower us to change. The new guys at MMS [Minnerals Management Service] will attempt to exercise oversight, Congress will hold more hearings, but in reality we have given over the Gulf to British Petroleum. Only the oil men can plug the hole. The value of moral huarrumping is rather minimal, and though, as an ex-fundamentalist, I can sermonize with the best of them, I will spare you my tiny outburst of dudgeon.

“We are a great nation immobilized at the moment by navel-gazers and poseurs and flackmeisters, and when you visit Washington, you see this clearly. Here are all the little marble palaces of the AFL-CIO, and NEA and NRA and AARP and AMA and PhRMA and the trial lawyers and Realtors and plumbers and the chemical industry and the nursing home operators – everybody but bank robbers and newspaper columnists has a mouthpiece in Washington – and it’s high-price schmoosing and yipping and yakking by thousands of overeducated schtoonks pumping out hogwash and hokum that is easily ignored by the bureaucrats and elected officials who do the actual work.”