This is a holiday season, stuffed with holiday traditions, for every faith and those without a structured set of devotions – and we should celebrate them all.
As a (sometimes faulty) Christian, I’ve always interpreted this time as the ultimate season of reflection and hope. But mostly hope. However dire the world geist may be at the moment, the older I get, and the more Christmases I experience, the greater the hope and the deeper the understanding that the noise and sometimes tragedy of the moment will, in fact, pass.
I’m not a Bible quoter – everyone has their favorites and I’d not want to even try to match the perspicacity and articulation of the thoughtful theologians I sometimes hear – but seeking any sources beyond Instagram reveals an almost universal support for hope. So, I have a wish list. It’s not all-inclusive, but its mine, which, of course, means “political.”
In no particular order – I’ll leave prioritizing to you:
- Let’s hope for a wider and younger recruitment of political leadership. It seems to me a lot of these folks have been hanging around for far too long. I saw a photo of Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell leading the President of Ukraine around on the Hill the other day and thought to myself that I’d never really known the Senate without those guys. And I’m really old.
- Let’s hope for our political leadership to turn away from the petty and pay attention to the central issues of the day. The petty issues have an ugly way of turning on us, focusing our energy and work on useless in-fighting and character assassination.
- Let’s hope for a makeover in what we want in our leaders – patriotic, honest about their faults and tolerant. It seems to me that the greatest blunder of the current crop is simple hypocrisy. I’m no taker of the moral high ground, myself, but I’m not running for office.
- Let’s hope to drop the rhetoric of moral superiority and “cancelling.” If someone is over the criminal line, prosecute. But be aware that all people have feet of clay in the “idol” department.
- Let’s hope for tolerance and a willingness to let others do as they do. The foundation of a free society is freedom. Unless they are harming you and yours, what others do, think, believe, and pursue is their business, not yours.
- Let’s hope we can concentrate on the big stuff, politically. There are great big issues of national moment – let’s hope we can learn to grapple with the hard ones, and let the little ones lie.
- Let’s hope we can learn to listen – all of us, not just the political leadership. There are some great ideas out there for fixing stuff; some crazy and undoable, true, but a lot are possible solutions and alternatives. We’ve been recycling the same old tiresome, unworkable talking points for decades.
- Let’s hope we can learn to be politically thoughtful. Real thinking is hard. It requires us to cogitate on new things. William James said “[a] great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” Let’s do the hard work necessary to make this thing called “democracy” work.
- Let’s hope for greater vision. Let’s get all tangled up in thinking about what comes next, what the future might look like, and how we can make that future better, instead of rehashing the past. Let’s try to expect good things from our political world, and demand they make good.
- Let’s hope. Hoping is hard, but that’s no excuse not to do so. Seneca wrote “non quia difficilia sunt, non audemus; sed quid non audemus, difficilia sunt.” I quoted him this time last year,and he’s still right.
Please add your own?
R. Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. endowed chair in American history, government and civics and Miller distinguished professor of political science at Florida Southern College. He is also a columnist for The Ledger and political consultant and on-air commentator for WLKF Radio in Lakeland.
