So far, 2022 has not inspired me to write.

So far, 2022 is indistinguishable from 2021, which was, in turn, indistinguishable from 2020.

I am tempted, therefore, to recycle some of my gems from the two preceding years. Ok, so you might say I didn’t really have too many gems worthy of recycling from the recent past.

That never stopped me before.

Throwing caution to the wind, I will try to be original this morning and write something new.

The NFL’s regular season ended last week, though if you are a New York fan, as I am, the season ended shortly after Labor Day.

Today begins Wild Card Weekend, which holds absolutely no interest for me. By now, I am usually so engrossed in counting the days to Pitchers and Catchers reporting to Spring Training. This year offers no such release from the grab of the NFL as millionaires and billionaires are pissing each other off rather than coming to an agreement as to cut the pie and divvy out the slices consisting of billions of fan-paid dollars.

So, I will be watching football today.

I will also be ranting (to myself in the loneliness of my Florida den while my children watch elsewhere.) about how gamblers have infiltrated the NFL (and every professional sport), which, ironically, makes me think that the MLB Players Association is correct. They should get every dollar they can from the money-grubbing owners who profit from the players’ bodies. There’s a word for that that I just can’t call to mind.

And so the rant begins.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Founding Fathers.

We used to refer to the Constitution as a Bundle Of Compromises.

The most notable (and despicable) was the three-fifths compromise.

You see, the slave states wanted to count the slaves as residents to increase their representation in the House of Representatives. The free states didn’t want to count the slaves towards determining the number of representatives. Therefore, only three-fifths of a state’s slave population was factored into the representation formula.

But there was an even more critical compromise that has screwed us over for years. Small states, or states with a limited population, didn’t want to get dictated to by the bigger states. Therefore, the upper house AKA, the Senate, has equal representation consisting of two Senators from every state.

That is why Kentucky, West Virginia, and other states that have opted to buy into disinformation, anti-intellectualism, anti-Science can muck up the works preventing any serious progress.

Still, compromise is often the only remedy to stagnation.

But we may need help in the form of inspiration from Kentucky’s famous son, Henry Clay, AKA, The Great Compromiser.

Clay showed that compromise was not rocket science and that taking two steps forward and one step back is better than standing still.

Ah well, that was another century and another country.