Silence is Golden

I started to blog under the misguided notion that it would be an ideal way to rant at idiocy and vocalize my random occasional opinions. Then I went silent — though not for any lack of an urge to rant, certainly not for any lack of idiocy to rant about and unfortunately not for any shortage of random opinions on…well…everything.

I trace my silence instead to my mother, who like so many mothers in the ’50s and ’60s admonished her kids not to say nothing at all if you couldn’t say anything nice. It was the Silence is Golden era. I suspect it also was the root of a generation of neurotics who in fact had a lot to say, little of which was very nice. In keeping t it all bottled up inside, we have found hypertension — but not our voice.

Just Keep Your Mouth Shut and Collect the Gold

As I have watched, read and listened in recent weeks to the sheer idiocy of the national debate on health care, I have chosen to remain silent. As Republicans threatened to repeal, as their rhetoric led to threats of actual violence upon those we have entrusted to make law — without the slightest repudiation from the conservative movement — I remained silent. (I couldn’t be silent about the twisted politicized approach to writing textbooks in Texas, but even my mother would have been okay with that.)

If silence is golden, I now am very rich indeed. So, why does it feel so cowardly instead of enriching. Might it be because I like my tires without spikes in the sidewalls and my trees without an adornment of toilet paper? Do I perhaps value the friendship of some Neanderthal friends too much to write something that may offend them? Do I just want to keep collecting the gold that comes with silence in hopes it actually may lead to something vaguely resembling satisfaction?

When Words Fail You

I ask myself how possibly I could have let weeks go by without commenting on what has to be the most dysfunctional time in recent memory — not counting, of course, the eight years of the war-mongering, torture-tolerant, greed-inspiring, spend-our-budget-surplus Bush presidency?

I think the answer is simple: I have been rendered totally speechless, utterly dumbfounded, unable to find words to express the disgust, outrage and pity I feel toward people who actually would oppose making health care available to everyone in this country. I have no words for people whose hearts seem empty and dead, other than the occasional Palinpatation. What can you write in the face of this apparent void of caring or compassion or empathy or equality? And, what words can possibly appropriately respond to the robotic recitations from whatever script these people are working from?

So, clearly, I am incapable of saying anything nice. I will revert to my silence and collect my gold — which today, especially, feels more like 30 pieces of sliver.