Letters

Won’t someone please show me how to chloroform that absurd, idealistic, teenaged Pollyanna who keeps bouncing back within me after each terminal betrayal, each cowardly lie, every unnecessary, ugly deception of neighbors, villagers, voters, citizens? But this inner Pollyanna lives on, hoping, against 92 years of real-life experiences, that human beings will overcome greed, cowardice, short-term thinking and finally let the truth be known.

“Ein Land, ein Volk, ein Führer! Der selbe Dreck wie frueher!” One nation, one people, one leader. The same crap as before. Now, why did this anti-Nazi limerick spring to mind just days after the election of a new government in Southampton Village?

My father used to say, “This country is like Romania, only bigger,” and I would stubbornly argue with him. Coming from a Hungarian, my father’s words were a terminal indictment of the corruption and hypocrisy he saw in our American society. I kept seeing only the potential for truth.

Now I would like to apologize to my father, and to Romania.

I did not count on the underlying American belief in the overwhelming benefits of just “getting along,” the near-universal praise of letting the politically defeated take the evidence of their crimes with them. Anything seems to be better than looking at the truth, than holding the vanquished perpetrators accountable for the damage they did to government, to our nation, to so many people, during their hold on power.

The favored and constantly evoked mantra praises accommodation, letting bygones be bygones.

Both on the national scene and in villages, the new brooms always stop way short of accountability. Or, in the words of a good friend and neighbor, “There are probably ten thousand villages just like ours all over the country.”

And that makes it okay to let crime pay? That makes it okay to sweep the undeniable evidence of corruption under the rug and to let the embedded corruption in the government continue to bilk the people? And another local house gets chopped down to make room for an unneeded, overpriced McMansion. And where is the affordable housing that is needed so badly?

Oh, shut up, Pollyanna! You are a righteous bore! Let’s all just learn the current mantra for “Let’s all get along,” and shout out loudly and often the buzzwords of today: “Unity!” “Together!” “Together!” “Unity!”

It only hurts when I laugh.

Evelyn Konrad

Attorney-at-law

Southampton