Plague upon our land

John Brummett’s column about a UALR football team reminded me of a fantasy novel idea.

It begins with a Razorbacks football game where nearly all spectators are family, friends, groupies, coaches and administrators of the teams and marching bands. The others are folks who come to work on their tan or just to get out of the house on a Saturday afternoon. We learn that the phenomenon occurs in college stadiums nationwide.

Motorcycle helmets fly off the shelves. Cigarette, alcohol and sugary soda sales plummet. Gun stores are shuttered and high-heeled shoe factories shut down.

Alas, a plague of sanity is visited upon the USA.

Local governments tackle local issues as if they were, well, local issues. Citizens clamor to pay taxes to solve the problems that result in high crime rates in clearly defined neighborhoods. Rounding up bad actors is midway down the to-do list.

We provide appropriate housing and health services for homeless citizens. We provide early childhood education and day care for working mothers.

Energy companies replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. We shift new highway construction money to mass transit.

Nobody cares who loves whom or how.

Congress nearly unanimously affirms that the Affordable Care Act is one of its most important accomplishments, along with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Members work on making them all better, like a loving extended family nearly free of dysfunction. No dysfunction would be too weird.

Feel free to use this for your own novel. I’ll buy it.

HOWELL MEDDERS

Fayetteville