A wish list for the new year

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Once upon a time, the coming of Hanukkah and Christmas meant that friends and family would send me lots of gifts, and I would reciprocate. Today, for many of us, with our children much older and our lives moving at such a fast pace, presents may have to wait until special birthdays or big anniversaries. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a wish list.

Mine is much bigger than a new sweater or some other material must-have. It’s tough to pick an order of priority, so here are my many wishes for the coming year.

I wish that for one year, all the politicians in Washington would resolve to stop beating up on the opposition and declare a moratorium on nastiness. With that would come new ideas on such things as immigration, taxes, health care, race issues, global warming and all the other tough challenges we face.

I wish that every television network that favors one party would agree to invite respected people from the other party for an honest dialogue on the world and national dilemmas we face. Fox News, for instance, claims that its coverage is “fair and balanced,” and MSNBC makes a similar claim. Both should have real discussions on real subjects with people of substance from both sides.

I wish all of those Middle Eastern countries to which we have given billions of dollars in foreign aid would unite once and for all to wipe out terrorist groups like ISIS and go after those sick people who kill schoolchildren just to score political points with their zealots. It would be real cool if Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and all other religious groups declared war on the real infidels in their midst.

I wish the 2016 election was over and we had named our new leader of the free world. The thought of two years of primaries, presidential debates and stupid statements by every would-be presidential candidate is sickening. Why can’t the two parties choose their best candidates and settle it like they do on “The Voice” or “Dancing With the Stars”? The public could vote over two or three nights and the winner would be introduced by Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert.

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