Groundhog Day redux

Though I've been accused of it again, I'm not going to bash Americans and their quaint customs. I did that already. OK, it really wasn't a bashing, but just about anything I say these days is taken by one of my fellow countrypeople as offensive. I wonder why they're so thin-skinned?

Personally, I think pseudo-holidays are fun. The only thing similar to Groundhog Day in these parts is Siebenschläfer (lit. "seven sleeper", that is the rodent glis glis, or the fat/edible dormouse (the Romans raised them and considered them a delicacy) ... not necessarily the one who told Alice anything, but perhaps), which is on 27 June (and if it rains on that day, it's supposed to rain for the next -- who would have guessed? seven weeks). But Siebenschläfer isn't as hyped and overdramatized, and it certainly was memorialized in film, as Groundhog Day.

OK, maybe because I was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania where groundhogs are not only cute but tasty (and that's for all you who rumpled your nose at the Romans) that I think it's kind of fun to pretend not to believe the nonsense, even though most people do.

It's OK, you can face up to it. Sure we don't "believe" any of this superstition, but when the day comes, we do stop and try to find out what's what. For most people, Phil's shadow or Siebenschläfter rain, tells the story. And don't give me any of that we're-all-into-science-and-not-superstition stuff. Didn't the US Senate just recently pass a resolution that disavowed the science of global warming? As if legislative votes had anything to do with any kind of reality known to the everyday person.

But inspite of all the denial, when it comes right down to it, when push comes to shove, when we have nothing less to raise as arguments, these are your elected representatives -- the "upper" house, no less -- and according to rules of democracy (which you all also claim to love so dearly and love proclaiming so loudly), whoever wins the election represents everybody, because, well, that's how the system works. Live with it. Should the world turn on its head and America fall to being just another failed empire, you'll all be guilty of whatever the new bad-boys on the block will want to accuse you of. If you don't believe me, just ask the Germans; they have some experience with this sort of thing.

And that's what I love about Groundhog Day. It keeps coming around again and again and again, and just as Bill Murry is a different person each time around, till he changes at heart, he really remains the same. And so is it with any and every empire that has ever plagued the earth. Oh, don't get me wrong, there is good in everything and good can come out of everything, but for the majority of people who have ever lived, we haven't been given the clean end of the stick. That, however, can, and should change. But, to effect that change, we have to start thinking (and acting) differently than we have before. We have to change at heart. Can you?