Who’s steering the ship?

Editor:

 Voting is a natural response to choices offered as soon as our five senses kick in after birth. 

 Humans express it before they get home from the delivery room. Every parent gets trained in a month to respond accordingly and every baby is unique. Keeping the peace and setting expectations of behavior inside a family unit is the challenge for the governing agents (mom and dad) and is complicated and messy. Compromises occur that cannot be prepared for ahead of time no matter how many child rearing theories are researched. It usually takes a few false starts on technique before everything runs smoothly as a new child is introduced to the society established.

 Increasingly, parents are not able to work in this process or decide they are too far apart in the philosphy applied, and they give up, separate, and arrive at a workaround to get those children to adulthood. Par for the course.

 If the separation is amicable it all tends to work well enough. If the parents are angry and vengeful the process breaks down and frequently the immature children arrive at the powerful position of playing the parents off against each other for all the things that children need: attention, greed, and competition.

 We are currently managing our society writ large in this situation. Our political parties are being run by the challenging children. It’s time to stand up to them. 

 Until 2012, 70 percent of Idaho registered voters were registered unafilliated. That meant however liberal or conservative, 70 percent were willing to cross party lines if a candidate didn’t back up their promises with appropriate action. Closed primaries where nobody communicates isn’t how working out the tricky issues of governance get addressed. 

 Let’s set some ground rules for the children.

Norma Brown, 

Weiser, Idaho