“He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talking ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew
He’d say ‘I’m gonna be like you, dad’
‘You know I’m gonna be like you’”
“Cat’s in the Cradle” — Harry Chapin

The 1974 song by Harry Chapin has been covered multiple times and has certainly become a cultural touchstone song over the nearly 50 years since its release.

In the four stanzas of the song, a father first welcomes his son into the world, but he’s so busy that he cannot be there for the vital first moments of life. In the second verse, the child is asking to play catch, but the father claims to “got a lot to do” and the son yields, while still aiming to be like his father.

In the third movement of the song, the son is now in college, but he’s so busy, he doesn’t have time to sit down to talk with his father and is asking to borrow the car keys to head out with his friends.

Finally, in the final stanza, the father calls his son and asks to see him, but the son mentions that while he’d love to be able to see his father that his new job is keeping him busy and his kids are ill, but it is nice to talk.

It was at that moment that the father realized that the hustle and bustle of his early years had become the hustle and bustle his son now lived.

Living in an area where much of the economy is driven by agriculture, the idea of reaping what one sows should be a very self-explanatory concept.

When you do something, it has ripple effects that can often be seen and/or felt far longer and far beyond the immediate action, just like planting a single seed can yield an entire plant full of crop.

Over the past week, the major national news has been the dysfunction in Washington, D.C.

One of the underreported aspects of the Republican party weakening their own elected House speaker is that it actually made the Democratic agenda in the House more powerful.

With multiple factions of the Republican party fighting against one another in the House, a unified Democrat voting block would need only to gain a small group of those Republicans to move legislation while Republicans are not only going to have to unify their entire party, but for multiple proposed pieces of their agenda, they will need to have Democrats on board as well.

The intentional work to divide not just the Republican party against the Democratic party, but also the Republican party against itself is now going to make the next two years of legislative work in the House extremely difficult, albeit entertaining in a “staring at a car crash” sort of way.

Many of the loudest voices of the GOP who are working to divide their own party are among those who did support (and still express support for) the actions that took place at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Jan. 6 committee presented a significant amount of paperwork and testimony that showed that the actions of that day were not only pre-planned, but that they were pre-planned by some within the highest levels of the government, up to, and potentially including, the President.

Their evidence has been handed over to the Department of Justice at this point, and serious charges against some “big” names are expected over the next year as the department processes the evidence now in hand.

However, the United States’ position as a world leader and world example has led others in the world to believe that this sort of behavior is the “norm” in the world.

Last week, a similar incident occurred when the newly-elected government attempted to meet in Brazil.

Supporters of former Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro stormed key government buildings. Unlike the elongated search that eventually resulted in arrests with the Jan. 6 incident, more than 1,500 have been arrested in Brazil and charged as part of the riots within days of the riot in that country.

Bolsonaro was a political ally of former President Donald Trump, and his actions leading up to last year’s election mirror Trump’s leading up to the 2020 election.

Bolsonaro began laying the groundwork in April that any loss in the fall election would be due to fraud, and by the time that the election did occur this year, those who were charged with verifying the election reportedly began receiving threats at home more than a month before the election had even occurred.

The Brazil voting system is a two-round system. In the first round, a candidate receiving more than 50% of the vote is automatically elected, and while Luis Inacio Lula da Silva defeated Bolsonaro in the first round, he did not receive the required 50% of the vote to be automatically elected, prompting the second round of voting between the top two candidates.
In the second round, Lula defeated Bolsonaro by more than one million votes in the popular election with nearly 80% of Brazilian registered voters turning out for the vote.

However, the worry that multiple governments expressed in the days and weeks after Jan. 6, 2021, came to be just two years later when another country’s leader refused to accept defeat and his supporters took a similar path to revolt.

The significant fortune of Jan. 6 is that firearms were not the primary weapons utilized during the riot.

However, it is hard to argue that the United States’ relationship with guns is at a different level than any other modern nation.

I grew up with guns in the back seat of a pickup that were needed if a rabid skunk was spotted or to protect cattle from potential predators. I love hunting. This is not a rip on guns at a base level.

However, there is something that needs to change when we have such a preponderance of weapons and lack of responsibility with those weapons that shopping centers in the Twin Cities were put on lockdown twice in three weeks due to gunfire in the last month.

This occurred the same week that a six-year-old brought a gun to school in West Virginia and intentionally shot a teacher.

There can and likely will be plenty of blame placed on the child’s parents for not securing the firearm. There will be plenty of blame put on the school for not having a system that detected the firearm in the possession of a first grader.

However, what will seemingly not be addressed (not enough, at least) is why whatever conflict that the child was having with their teacher, the child felt it was best resolved with firearm violence. What will not be addressed is why words were not utilized to better whatever issue was going on for the child.

Words, instead of violence. Grace, instead of goading. What a novel concept.

I recently watched an old interview with former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, discussing their friendship. Bush mentioned that he developed a significant amount of respect for Clinton when, after defeating Bush’s father, Clinton accepted the concession call from Bush’s father and immediately requested the ability to call for help in the future as he negotiated his new role.

Bill immediately piped up, “…and I did call!”

“Just like I called you,” George quickly responded.

We don’t have to be one side or another. We don’t have to be black or white.

As the oldest of four boys, I was often encouraged to “be an example” for my younger brothers.

Now, I’m in the role of encouraging my own children to be examples for their own siblings and for the daycare children in our home.

We all have a choice to be an example every day.

When we get to the fourth stanza of our own songs, are we going to be happy with the seeds that we’ve sown?