EDITORIAL: We can leap boldly into the new year

And so, here we are at the end of another year … or is it the beginning of a new one? Another of those glass-half-full vs. half-empty mysteries to ponder, perhaps.

Sadly for Albany and southwest Georgia, 2018 is going out with the kind of bang that brings nothing but heartache. A domestic issue turned violent Saturday, and on Sunday the Albany Police Department announced that a young man had shot and killed his sister and injured his stepfather. If the investigation into the incident plays out as the initial Albany Police Department report seems to indicate, it doesn’t appear that the “good person with a gun” theory applies in this case, as the shooter was apparently protecting his mother.

We can debate the Second Amendment rights vs. gun control issue until manufacturers stop making bullets, but nothing we say or do will bring back victims of violence so tragically lost. And, besides, pointing fingers and vilifying others who believe differently than we do is never going to move the bar toward solving our problems anyway.

No, what this latest incident of violence shows is that there is dire need for some type of cleansing in our community, in our state and in our country. We — and the people we’ve elected to represent us at the various levels of government — have all but written off the absence of a moral compass and the disappearing sense of kindness and decency with a shrug and a “That’s just the way it is now.”

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. When we have bold elected officials who work with the agencies and the parents and the churches to provide alternatives to the dehumanizing lifestyle that pervades pop culture and society in general, we’ll see fewer young people who fall sway to the glamorized indecency that has chipped away at our very humanness and left us something less.

When we start caring about our children and demanding that they disconnect from the sewage that awaits them readily on the new media that’s anything but social and we join them in wholesome,educational and healthy activities, we start making a difference.

When we quit complaining and start demanding that our tax monies be used to improve aging and failing infrastructure and to actively seek employers who will bring jobs to our region — and then, if they don’t meet our demands, get them out of office as quickly as possible — we’ll see the status quo start to give way to positive change.

We — collectively, and particularly southwest Georgians — haven’t found an issue that we won’t gripe and complain about. But we leave it to “anybody else” to actually do something. After all, if someone actually came in and started making changes, what would we have left to gripe about?

As we dive head-first into 2019, here’s hoping that we quit flinging digital darts at our elected officials and instead engage with them, one-on-one and collectively, as they publicly carry out the business that we pay for. Here’s hoping that we stop allowing a group of Atlanta-based politicians to determine how the taxes we pay to the state are going to come back and help those of us who live outside the area immediately surrounding the state capital.

And, here’s fervently hoping that we’ll stop the foolish partisan political idiocy of following a person or a political party into bankruptcy — moral and financial — and even unto the gates of hell rather than allow the dreaded C-word (compromise) to even enter into the discussion.

This is a country of “we, the people,” not, we, the rich and the well-placed. Let’s don’t wait for some self-centered clown in Washington, Atlanta or anywhere else in our country to start the ball rolling toward taking back our country. There’s no reason why it can’t start with you … and you … and you. History has shown us what even one strong-willed and determined individual can do. Imagine what a whole bunch could manage.

— The Albany Herald Editorial Board