July 17, 2016: Making American Great Again? Telling it like it is?

Bumper-sticker philosophy has all the nuance of a shiny barbed fishing hook and can be just as deadly. Hoo-nōs

There is a person in my neighborhood who parks their vehicle in various places, goes online via their phone and tosses out their cigarette butts—and lots of them (I pick them up, along with trash other folks toss out–but there is more than I alone can do).

I queried them about their littering practice and was asked “what’s my problem?” I told them I wasn’t against their humanity only their trash. They took it as an apology and said “who cares about the tossed cigarette butts, it’s a dirt road.” And keep in mind this particular individual is nowhere near the level of trashing the planet that some are (all the way from tossed out, patriotically-decorated beer cans to piles of trash—and worse). In any case, somehow it turned to politics and what seemed to be a negative about Obama and a positive about Trump.

This isn’t about Obama, Clinton, or Trump, it’s about us.

If we want to make America great again (what does that mean?) and tell it like it is (what does that mean?), what is our behavior to support that? Tossing out trash? Obviously we’re doing our part to make America great, eh?

Here’s a clue, though I’m not even close to the intellectual cutting edge: No politician can make a country great, but they can ding it badly. It’s us folks and it’s a lot of micro behaviors like not tossing out trash, not to mention picking some of it up even if we didn’t toss it in the first place. If we want to be great, we’ve got to act accordingly, not expect to vote in someone to do it for us. Politicians don’t make us great, we do.

And I’m guessing that’s telling it like it is, even if it won’t fit on a sticker much less a bumper.