North Wind and Sun Aesop Deju Vu

             For a slave without computer, Harvard or Stanford degree, assistants, or a library, Aesop must have been a pretty amazing person. How many stories in literature have withstood the tests of time and to this day in a world that has changed exponentially in the almost 3,000 years following their creation, captured the human spirit, explained it, and remained able to reach out and motivate it and impart morals and ethics that have transcended a very agrarian society to today’s incredibly complex society with its foundations under siege?  Very few, very few indeed.  Most of our modern day authors and thinkers are quickly relegated to the deep discount bin at Barnes and Noble or if they made the cut at our public libraries, soon sold off by the libraries to maintain shelf space.

Not so with Aesop’s Fables. It is a shame that we do not require them as mandatory reading in our schools, in our homes, and most importantly in the halls of Congress and the White House. Personal attacks in photo op and sound bite rhetoric simply are not conducive to this nation trying to solve its problems.  Enough is enough. Stop acting like the North Wind and more like the Sun as we mere mortal travelers trudge about our lives:

                                  Here Comes the Sun

We always thought politicians were full of empty blast and hot air

Unleashing their ego on us mere mortals that we could hardly bear

Alas we were wrong, and the ego winds that can be summoned at the drop of the hat

Can in an instant turn wet and cold and knock even the strongest egos flat

North Winds without compunction to drive with words elephants on their knees

Especially those new pachyderms that have a fondness for Teas

The North Wind may be brutal but  its memories of history fall short

May knock down the man but the spirit to follow one’s values will not abort

Look only to the dark days of the London Blitz or the Dresden fires

Walls may be broken but our spirits will not fold or retire

Label a man a jihadist or hostage taker or holder of a gun

More often than not any attempt to reach an agreement he will shun

You may blow demeaning rhetoric in increasing. demeaning  force

May slow him down, bend him over but not cause him to change course

Like the traveler who. in the increasing winds,  grips tighter his cloak

To think the rhetoric winds shed his cloak and bring him to the table is a joke

There has been too much blame passed around

Time for reason and compromise to prevail for the cloak to fall to the ground

Let the warmth of the civil and rational Sun through the rhetoric clouds

Toning down the shrill personal attacks out of line,  too raucous loud

536 leaders need to once again act like responsible adults

Shed this nonproductive chaotic finger pointing cult

Time for inflaming, demeaning   rhetoric for all to resist

Time for a 536 leaders to put Aesop’s Fables on top of their reading list!

© October 10, 2013 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet