Cameo Appearances of Common Sense

With the recent memorial tributes paid to Mr Chuck Cadman, the question arises Why is it these days that common decency and common sense make little more than cameo appearances in the halls of power? Like uninvited guests they show up agitating the status quo arguing for a simpler and more just society until old forces and the three-tongued mindsets of animated relics shoo them off, expelling their influence from the hallowed premises. Then its back to business as usual inventing more syllables for lawyer.speak to utterly confound and dazzle the masses.

I Elected him?

Many of us cringe in the knowing that we actually elected these slick gladhanders and were so foolish as to imagine that they might share our serious intent to get the important work done, work involving no less than the rescue of millions of people from starvation and the precarious ecological balance of our planet.
Pandemics are looming in the shadows of developing countries where issues of hygiene are eclipsed by the need to feed one’s family.

The messages of desperate scientists that we are all at risk of being exposed to drug resistant disease and more extreme weather from climate warming (and all the weird ramifications of that earth-battering phenomenon) are falling on deaf ears. These are major concerns which need real action and each country belonging to the civilized and more well-to-do columns (the G8 for example) must somehow be compelled to act. Clang. Clang. How loudly must we ring this bell?

What is missing from these elected bodies are enough people like Cadman with the will to take the bull by the horns.

Democracy, while clearly still the most representative means of constituting a government, has in its evolution become flawed. Corporate lobbyists find ways to circumvent the rules related to campaign financing; the candidates are progressively becoming puppets maneuvered into position by the old guard; and once elected, even if the individual is nobly intent on striking a humanistic chord among his new peers he is relegated to the backbenches where he proceeds to be educated as to the way things are done by the senior class, very similar to juniors arriving in private school university settings, and as juvenile.