By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
How many of you remember driving a stick shift? Recall how that feels, to disengage from forward motion, pause just the slightest moment in almost indiscernible nothingness and then click into the next gear, feel it grab? Our progress as a planet, a nation, a people has felt like that to me for a while now, as if we’ve tried to climb a long hill in fourth gear, slowing to a near standstill while we wait for some giant hand to reach for the gear shift.
Soon, quick as all that, a nearly imperceptible click will send us spinning forward, still too slow to manage the climb but free from the inertia that holds us, preparing for the next shift into gear to put some muscle in our drive. That’s where we are and where we’re going.
The news this week seemed to smack of that momentum, moving forward while unengaged. John Kerry, playing a very quiet game of statesmanship — yes, truly — has reinstated the process for direct peace talks between Israel and Palestine. This has taken six months of intense diplomacy, the agreement still being formalized as the first positive step toward peace talks in five years. Did you hear about it in the news? No? Then you probably also don’t know that Kerry recently suggested on Pakistani television that U.S. drone strikes in the region might soon end, signaling a restart of U.S./Pakistan security talks with potential to close a major breach in relations.
This has not gotten much media attention, given the meme that Pakistan is considered THE most dangerous hot spot on the globe, while the hard-won return to Mid-east peace talks has been overshadowed by everything from recent tweets on Weinergate to warnings not to Google information on pressure cookers. What does all this prove? Overwhelmed and spinning freely, we are not engaged.