Editorial: Far from the reflecting pool
10/10/2017 12:55PM ● By Richard Gaw
From the time he first saw the reflection of his face in the water, it was over for Narcissus.
Son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope, Narcissus was told by a lot of people that he was a very good-looking guy, and the moment Nemesis dragged him to the pool and asked Narcissus to look into it, he began a love affair with himself, and he kept staring at his own image and believing in his beauty until he eventually lost the will to live and died.
There is a large reflecting pool of sorts now arranged in the White House, where between tweets and insults, the President of the United States visits. He loves what he sees in the water. It's the best picture of himself. He's a hero there, and nothing disappoints him. There are similar reflecting pools up and down the corridors of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. and in the State chambers in Harrisburg, where elected officials worship on the altar of their own inventions, categorized and desensitized and sanitized over and over again until they become defined not by their duty to serve but by the protection of the image in the water. There is no one there but them; the pool has become absent of other faces, and the constituencies in the states and towns and municipalities they were elected to represent are nowhere to be found.
There are no imagined reflecting pools anywhere near Kennett Square Borough Mayor Matt Fetick, and it's because he has chosen to spend his two terms as a mayor focusing his gaze on the stunning rainbow of diversity in and around the borough. On Oct. 6, he proved it. In a joint conference with Downingtown Mayor Josh Maxwell, Fetick blasted efforts underway to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) legislation passed in 2012, and encouraged Reps. Ryan Costello and Brian Fitzpatrick to support passage of the Dream Act of 2017 – a bipartisan bill that aims to provide a direct path to U.S. citizenship for the 800,000 “Dreamers.”
"Nowhere in history do we hold people accountable for the sins of their fathers,” Fetick said at the conference. “We do not hold people accountable for what other people do. Yes, it is quite possible that there are kids who now know that their family is here illegally, but when you come here as a child through your parents' choosing, we don't hold people accountable to that and send them back home. It is not a value that I as a lifelong Chester County resident believe in. I don't believe this is a value that this country was built on. We hold people accountable for who they are and what they do.
"It is absolutely ridiculous to use any type of political party or political agenda to have anyone living in fear,” he added. “No one should be living in fear. That's not who we are."
Fetick's comments resounded like a blast of hope that spoke for La Communidad Hispana and the Kennett Consolidated School District and Indivisible KSQ and the 6,000 “Dreamers” of Chester County, who wake up every day tortured by the fear of deportation, not only for themselves, but for their families. Fetick did not choose to hide behind the safety of the canned comment. He did not mail in a press release, or first funnel his viewpoints through a campaign poll. Rather, whether one supports or opposes his stance, Matt Fetick delivered his comments from his heart, passionately so, as an elected official whose only role is that of a public servant.
In a world of increasing political reflecting pools and elected narcissists whose only mission is to stare into the waters of their invented perfection, how perfect is that?
Son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope, Narcissus was told by a lot of people that he was a very good-looking guy, and the moment Nemesis dragged him to the pool and asked Narcissus to look into it, he began a love affair with himself, and he kept staring at his own image and believing in his beauty until he eventually lost the will to live and died.
There is a large reflecting pool of sorts now arranged in the White House, where between tweets and insults, the President of the United States visits. He loves what he sees in the water. It's the best picture of himself. He's a hero there, and nothing disappoints him. There are similar reflecting pools up and down the corridors of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. and in the State chambers in Harrisburg, where elected officials worship on the altar of their own inventions, categorized and desensitized and sanitized over and over again until they become defined not by their duty to serve but by the protection of the image in the water. There is no one there but them; the pool has become absent of other faces, and the constituencies in the states and towns and municipalities they were elected to represent are nowhere to be found.
There are no imagined reflecting pools anywhere near Kennett Square Borough Mayor Matt Fetick, and it's because he has chosen to spend his two terms as a mayor focusing his gaze on the stunning rainbow of diversity in and around the borough. On Oct. 6, he proved it. In a joint conference with Downingtown Mayor Josh Maxwell, Fetick blasted efforts underway to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) legislation passed in 2012, and encouraged Reps. Ryan Costello and Brian Fitzpatrick to support passage of the Dream Act of 2017 – a bipartisan bill that aims to provide a direct path to U.S. citizenship for the 800,000 “Dreamers.”
"Nowhere in history do we hold people accountable for the sins of their fathers,” Fetick said at the conference. “We do not hold people accountable for what other people do. Yes, it is quite possible that there are kids who now know that their family is here illegally, but when you come here as a child through your parents' choosing, we don't hold people accountable to that and send them back home. It is not a value that I as a lifelong Chester County resident believe in. I don't believe this is a value that this country was built on. We hold people accountable for who they are and what they do.
"It is absolutely ridiculous to use any type of political party or political agenda to have anyone living in fear,” he added. “No one should be living in fear. That's not who we are."
Fetick's comments resounded like a blast of hope that spoke for La Communidad Hispana and the Kennett Consolidated School District and Indivisible KSQ and the 6,000 “Dreamers” of Chester County, who wake up every day tortured by the fear of deportation, not only for themselves, but for their families. Fetick did not choose to hide behind the safety of the canned comment. He did not mail in a press release, or first funnel his viewpoints through a campaign poll. Rather, whether one supports or opposes his stance, Matt Fetick delivered his comments from his heart, passionately so, as an elected official whose only role is that of a public servant.
In a world of increasing political reflecting pools and elected narcissists whose only mission is to stare into the waters of their invented perfection, how perfect is that?
