Opinion : Provoking your New Year's agitations with force and persuasion

Every year at this time, we hear people talking again about "resolutions."

Lose weight.

Stop smoking.

Spend less time watching TV.

Say nicer things about my bosses/colleagues/relatives – or at least stop saying what we think of them in front of our children.

Break our American society's addiction to oil – not to mention reality television and mindless cliches.

Got originality? Few do. Especially during the first week of January.

Especially when it comes to words.

A resolution is something you resolve to do. To resolve is to determine; to determine is to cause. A synonym for cause is "incite."

Other synonyms of incite include agitate, arouse, coax, drive, foment, force, goad, impel, inflame, persuade, prick, provoke, psych, push, put up to, raise, rouse, set off, solicit, spur, taunt, and trigger.

So today, I do not hope to inspire you to get off your lazy bum and make something of your sorry self, for a change. I am seeking to psych, intending to inflame, aiming to agitate and most of all, allegedly and without allegory or allergens, to allure my readers by alluding to my allegiance to alliteration.

(Editor's note: Our columnist has spent the last month shoveling snow, cleaning his basement, starting his tax filing and watching promotions for January's lame and intelligence-insulting reality shows – and doing all this while drastically reducing the amount of sugar in his diet. We apologize in advance for his even grumpier than usual mood. Or maybe he's this grumpy all the time and we just noticed. Either way, we're sorry for today's allover allotment which we have allowed.)

Some famous baseball manager – I should have paid attention when the people quoting him said his name – has said, or has at least been blamed for saying, "If we're going to win the pennant, we've got to start thinking we're not as good as we think we are."

And face it, folks, we, as a nation, are not as good as we think we are.

The vast majority of Americans – at least 76 percent of us, according to www.ambulancedriving.com – believe that we are better than average drivers.

That is, statistically speaking, impossible, unless the other 24 percent of us are "horribly worse than average." But you can bet that the number of drivers who will label themselves that way is much lower than 24 percent.

And during the 2008 election cycle, one poll indicated that 90 percent of Americans said that they personally, were ready for a black president. But of those very same people, only 50 percent of them said America is ready for a black president. In other words, according to that poll, a very large number of Americans believe that we are better than the rest of us.

We've become a nation of people who think we are better than each other, a nation of people who think we are better than everyone else in the world.

But we ain't, as Dizzy Dean said, "what we used to be."

It's time we start saying so.

After the sugar of the Christmas season, when most of us were nicer than usual to each other, we need to bring in the new year with a heavy dose of spice. We need the social equivalent of Tabasco sauce as we discuss the state of our society and our government.

Here's what Americans need to resolve to be in 2011:

1. Candid. We need to stop talking so nicey-nice about things that don't deserve it.

I am still waiting for a public service announcement like this from a local TV affiliate:

Good evening, this is I. C. M. Wastintime, program manager of K-DUH TV. Tonight's programming is even more lame and intelligence-insulting than last night's. It's so horrible that we can't stand our own shows any more. We are now going to go off the air to allow you to turn off the TV and go for a walk or enjoy some other quiet individual, couple or family activity. It would be even more inspiring for a politician to stand up and say: My party has degenerated into a group of mindless puppets. Do yourselves a favor and vote for someone else, so we can go back to the real world and find out what is actually happening in our nation, our world.”

2. Cynical. I am optimistic about 2011, and the perpetual promise that is America. But government is still government, and politics is still politics, no matter which of the two outdated, impotent political parties is in charge.

3. Satirical. We need to revive the art of making fun of what's wrong with society by pretending to support it. And yes, we can do that without using words that would make parents blush and reach for the remote.

4. Silent. The late Marya Mannes, American author and journalist, said, "The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other."

And the less they think. She also said, “For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves.”

The first thing we would think if we ever got enough peace and quiet to do so, is, "Hey, I really am not as good as I think."

And that starting with that thought can, and should, lead us to make ourselves better in many ways.