Saturday, July 11, 2009

What Does ‘Telemachus’ Mean Anyway?

‘Telemachus’ is a Greek name derived from two words: ‘machus’ meaning ‘thrower’ or ‘warrior’ and ‘Tele’ meaning ‘afar’.

“A long distance ‘war-thrower’”, perhaps it means then. Not a bad analogy to keep in mind for us citizenry nowadays perhaps as well. We continue to allow our very own duly-elected representatives, senators and president in Washington, DC to make misguided decisions for our future and ignore the major spending problems that must be addressed immediately…or else.

We, the registered voting public, are as much, and probably more, at fault than they are. They are only doing what they think we want them to do. To date, they have not felt any raging animosity towards their votes, speechifying and actions.

Telemachus was also the name of the son of Penelope and Odysseus who was the central character in the ‘Odyssey’. He was named for his father's expertise in shooting arrows in a variety of ways.

The patron saint of this blog, however, Saint Telemachus himself, helped end the gladiatorial games in Rome forever by his brave example of non-violent protest, the spirit of which we honor and obey. But perhaps we would do well to adopt some of the militancy embodied in the Greek derivation of the word described above.

We could become more of a “war-thrower’ from each congressional district by doing two things: 1) Run against the incumbent in every congressional and legislative office across the land; or 2) Urge a nationwide whole-scale vote against every incumbent regardless of whether you like them or not. That is enough of a “bomb-throwing’ gesture that will terrify every incumbent elected public servant, I can promise you that.

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