God help me…
…but every time I see a GOP member of the political class, with a few exceptions (Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Jim Jordan…just a handful) refuse to speak or take a position on a serious political issue, making the air literally pregnant with their silence…
…let’s see there was the comic opera called the “Impeachment of Donald Trump” just eight months ago…and more recently an unending parade of lies coming forth from both the Democrats and the federal bureaucracy, this most recent round by the Center for Disease Control…but if you get right down to it, going all the way back to the feckless Paul Ryan, who became Speaker in when the feckless John Boehner stepped down, handing him the Gavel, who in turn quickly handed the entire House over to Nancy Pelosi in 2018 because the feckless wing of the Republican would rather lose political power to the Democrats, and maybe even the country, than lose the patronage of God only knows what sort of worldwide financial consortium…is only now being revealed.
But I’m not talking about politics here, but rather personal integrity and courage; not party loyalty, but loyalty to the United States of America, especially the “for which it stands” part. Manhood. Womanhood.
I get asked all the time “When is last time you ever heard a Democrat say ‘God bless America” or anything even remotely patriotic?” Or religious, using God as proper noun instead of an adjective? Then it occurs to me, when is the last time I’ve heard a Republican gush or wax poetic about his or her love of our Country or the flag?
Besides Donald Trump, that is.
This isn’t an accident, it’s a harmony.
Forget America, forget the Constitution, forget all the trappings of patriotism that have carried us through good wars and bad wars alike, where the bravery and patriotism of the men and women who fought and died in those far outweighed any patriotic victory gained by the rest of our people who stayed home and watched and waited…except in three instances:
When and how America was born, the War of Independence,
When and how free Americans went to war to free a people they had never seen, much less personally knew, and which was the first time in human history this had ever occurred; the American Civil War, and
When and how America, in order to save itself from enemies who had dedicated themselves to destroying not only other countries, but Human Freedom and Liberty itself, found it necessary to rescue those countries as well; World War II
Certain laws of nature have emerged that apply to humans at the lowest level of human interactions: 1) There will always be bullies and predators, whether in the school yard, the saloon, or in the affairs of nations, 2) There will always be only a very few who will stand up to those bullies. And some times a few may be enough, if they are of stalwart courage, and possess the cunning to defeat a rigid and predictable enemy, as America did to England in 1782. But you see, America defeated the English with the same yeomanry in our Revolution the English used to twice defeat France in France 300 years earlier, simply because the French would not adapt to fighting conditions, out of consideration of their nobility, who would not deign to fight alongside their commoners. Nor have they ever since.
It’s easy for me to make fun of the French (I’ve got a thousand one-liners) but indeed, if you’ll recall that great scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
you’ll see that the French habit of expecting someone else to send their sons to die defending French soil (WWI, WWII, most notably) has become something of a cliche.
But just as it took England 300 years to go from a royal aristocracy built on a true bond of brotherhood with the common folk to having to try to subdue those same freemen when they wanted to govern themselves, it was only natural that our government class would begin to behave like the peerage of old, also about 300 years later.
Even in school yard fights, when bloody noses were still allowed, kids would take no side (usually there is a heavy favorite) waiting to run up to the winner to say “I was always in there pulling for you, Butch”.
Of course, money, prestige and power are involved now, but the United States Congress has become an entire body of fence-straddlers, going, in natural science-speak, from a body of alpha males to a corps of beta males and females, whose educations, especially Law, are now suspect.
Mark Twain said, around 1900,
“There is no distinctively native American criminal class save Congress”.
(Note: This was before Woodrow Wilson had encouraged the Congress to enact the XVI Income Tax Amendment and create the Federal Reserve in 1913, making the control of money in America Congress’s primary occupation.)
Mark Twain said anyway:
“It is un-patriotic.”
“It is un-Constitutional.”
“It is un-American.”
(long pause)
“It is French.”
I like Twain’s take, for to analyze the French culture’s bent toward moral cowardice the scholarly would require hundreds of pages to describe. Of course there are exceptions galore, only not enough to change the rule.
This is not yet America’s fate, but well may be if we surrender the next two generations as we have done with the last one.
Back to my original “God help me”…
…for in the craven quiet of the Republican Congress the past four years in general and the last year in particular …God forgive me, but the more I see and don’t hear from the GOP the more I admire Saddam Hussein, who was a mass murderer, but still had the manhood to walk erect up the steps to meet the hangman. The American Congress, almost all of them, would have to be drugged, then drug of the steps, trembling and whimpering to meet their Maker.
End of lesson.
