From 1999 to 2006, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin told us a story about the better angels of our body politic. His show "The West Wing" had a president who was a progressive Democrat, and a Congress that was oppositional and Republican.
However, the show was balanced and counterbalanced with thoughtful and sometimes brilliant Republicans, unthinking and sometimes backward Democrats, and just about every type in between, including people who were simply and supremely people.
We were amused and moved, entertained and challenged, by politics the way we would like it to be, the way it should be. It was a civil lesson in civics, and a civics lesson in civility -- lessons we desperately need now.
One can easily dismiss the stories of a television show as fantasy. I'd suggest that today's current political "reality" could just as easily and accurately be dismissed as farce -- if it were not a tragedy, that is killing us, both figuratively and literally.
GORDON MCALISTER, WACONIA, MINN.
