For many decades, at the countless number of events that marked the brave efforts of various public safety officials and even individual citizens, one thing is a common occurrence.
People do not like to talk about acts of bravery as being any big deal. And, you almost never tell a person who was brave they were because they will say something along the lines of that “it was just part of the job.”
This has nothing to do with them. Regardless of whether they concede an action was an act of bravery, they are the true heroes.
The problem is with everyone else in the world and more specifically, those that call politics their profession. And, that is where we are in American History today.
We have a bunch of people in Washington who want to be the hero on a specific issue and they will turn cartwheels to be the hero over their colleague in order to do it.
All you have to do is look no further than immigration. We have a President who is known for the deals he has done and we have a Senator from New York who gets along with him. How is then that we are still talking about immigration? How is it that this is still an issue? 20 minute conversation. Done.
The problem, unfortunately comes that in anything in DC, or for that matter in Hartford or in Boston, someone must win. Someone has to be the hero. Someone has to in some way say “I did it. I solved the problem.”
And, that is the problem. There are so many people trying to solve even the simplest of problems that nothing gets done.
Until that changes nothing will ever get done on any issue ever.
And until things changes we will have more stories of people in hardship like Irida in Northampton, Lucio in Amherst and Gisele in Springfield that will play a waiting game within their own lives, even as the people around them get on with theirs.
The bottom line is simple I guess.
Can’t we just leave the hero making to the deserving and tell everyone else to get out of the way?