I haven’t read Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Silver Blaze since I was in elementary school, but the “curious incident” of the dog that didn’t bark has stuck with me. If you want to fully understand this short story you can follow the links, but for my purposes, all I care about is that Sherlock Holmes was able to solve the crime by figuring out that a watchdog that didn’t bark meant that a stranger wasn’t responsible. The absence of evidence was the best evidence.
From time to time, this example comes to my mind when I am thinking about the tremendous amount of relief I feel every single day that George W. Bush is no longer our president. I can, of course, point to the many accomplishments of the Obama administration and be grateful for that, but those accomplishments are not what gives me a sense of simple relaxation.
What I really value is what no longer happens at all.
I want someone to do a study that compares how often Bush administration officials communicated to the public that they should be afraid and how often that’s happened in the Obama administration.
I am so grateful for No Drama.
I don’t want it to ever end.
I didn’t think I’d ever make to the end of eight years of Bush, and I never want to live like that again.