Resisting change based on anger,fear
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Editor,
This last week, having no video signal on my TV because of receiver problems, I was forced into renting some movies for a few days, something I rarely ever do.
I just finished watching “42,” that great story of Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color barrier in major league baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers back in the mid 1940s. I found the emotional level of this movie quite high. I was thoroughly taken with Branch Rickey, owner of the Dodgers, and his total involvement and commitment to supporting Robinson for the good of baseball. I was 16, living on a farm in Wisconsin, during this time. Little did I know of all this, actually. And it was not talked about in our family, Chicago Cub fans that we were.
While watching the credits at the end, it suddenly flashed on my mind how representative much of the breakthrough in this dramatic story on the field of baseball is to America today being played out on the field of politics. I immediately asked myself this: “How much have we learned?”
To me, the parallels are there in many ways. For example, breaking the color barrier with a black president, and the Branch Rickey’s of the world vs. those resisting change.
I simply offer this as something to consider. Presently in America we are witnesses to and experiencing a political process fraught with fear and anger associated with a “change barrier” just as pervasive as was happening almost 70 years ago with the anger and fear in major league baseball associated with a “change barrier.” Both built upon fear. How much have we learned? Food for thought, I feel.
Bob McClellan
Polson
