The Wondering Whiz-herd of Washington

Sometimes it’s easy to relate an allegoric story and its characters to its intended subject. Sometimes it’s not even recognized that the characters in a story are meant to be symbolic representatives of anything.  So when attempting to use a story or its characters to convey an allegoric relationship to another context there is the potential for the misapplication of the intended dimension of the character’s quality with the perceived dimension. Despite the hazard of such mismatched meanings between writer and reader, the attempt is justified on the “nothing ventured” principle.

As we journey down the crumbling brick road to the infamous ‘Embattled City’ of DC, we encounter many tales about the denizens of that city and of the strange and damaged creatures that inhabit the land of US. The citizens of US look to a collection of individuals collectively known as the Whiz-herd of Congress to provide the solutions to all their problems. These Whiz-herd representatives of the people are themselves characteristic of the creatures in US, and we gain an understanding of the US by understanding these Whiz-herds themselves.

What personalities, abilities and attitudes then do we find amongst the Whiz-herds revealing the explanations for the failures, dysfunction and problem producing actions that they impart upon the nation?

The Whiz-herd includes a number and a variety of scarecrow types. They range from those whose standard persona are the harbingers of doom to those who, like the reeds that famously stuff their heads, bend and twist with every wind that blows through the political fields. There is not much difference between the motivations at work within these effigies of political ineptitude that burn so brightly within their Party. Whether these Whiz-herds are fanning the flames of fear or of hatred or are simplistically following from the front of their constituencies’ anxieties about and toward the future and change, they are doing so with the intelligence and rationality that would be expected from someone with a brain made of desiccated pasture fodder. It is this deficiency in insight, comprehension and reasoning that most informs us about these Whiz-herds’ inability to serve the public and accomplish productive, efficient and important service to the nation. Can we really be astonished about the non-functioning of Congress when considering the composition of the compost that most assuredly is fermenting within their cranium and which, like its gardening counterpart, will only be useful when deeply buried within the ground and far out of sight.

The scarecrow dimension of the Whiz-herds is not the only or even necessarily the dominant characteristic among our members of Congress. There are plenty of Whiz-herds with the tin-man property incorporated into their construction.  Those Whiz-herds most embodying these mechanical and rigid approaches to every situation and problem are the proud and pompous promoters of unfeeling compassionless non-solutions that reflect their stifled visions of America.  And the public suffers from these Whiz-herd solutions that are built as inflexible and intolerant programs into the operating system of our society inflicting the dehumanizing philosophies imprinted upon the central processor of these tin-men.

Continuing in this allegoric line of references are the cowardly lions of the Whiz-herd coterie. We will recognize the bellowing, blustering, bombastic bullies who believe that their pontificating positions of power in the pride endow them with an automatic authority that is part of the natural order of the world. They operate from a mind-set of fear either in themselves or their supporters which they translate into the need to attack every movement or shadow in the hope that it will scare off anything that might require real courage to stand up and challenge the established herd or Whiz-herd mentality.  These lionized representatives who cower before a media poll statistic that to act against would require them to fight for an idea or ideal that serves the nation’s interests but directly challenges the inferred public position of any group from which they receive support.  We find in our safari through the Congressional savannas these officials who tremble before a pledge requiring their submission to the alpha-males that control the pride. And so are left with Whiz-herds who can only operate within the pack’s political policies because any attempt to challenge the status quo would mean actually taking a risk of becoming a powerful king of the political jungle.

It is from these qualities and personalities that we are left with the Congress of Wondering Whiz-herds. Those purveyors of politics that are more involved in misdirections, sleights of hand, and flash over substance displays that are performing their role not to serve but to placate, entertain and deceive the public so that they can continue their tenure in the halls of power.

So don’t look behind that curtain and witness the Whiz-herds’ true nature. If you start examining what the Whiz-herds are doing or are not doing, you will begin to realize that they are not doing the peoples’ business, they are not solving our problems, they are not leading or protecting us. The Whiz-herds are desperately working to prevent anyone from demonstrating that they don’t have the answers and can’t address the real national problems.

The denizens of US must look away from the media theater of personalities and pointless principles of platitudes, and stay out of the enticing political poppy-fields cultivated by our Republican and Democratic parties. The time has come for a great political tornado to rid the halls of Congress of these Whiz-herds and return us to a land of the people, by the people and for the people. We have always been able to return there, we just seem to have forgotten that we must do it.