The Wilderness

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Abraham Lincoln

I find myself sitting, sometimes for hours, with nothing in my heart but despair for a nation and a people that seems to have lost all semblances of good, all impression of humanity and all appearance of what was at one time something to polish and throw across our shoulders like a mantle of hallelujah and can’t touch this. We are too frequently a sorry lot these days, pathetic because if you are old enough to know better, old enough to remember real heroes, you know today we fall far short too often we are not anywhere near what we once were. This is not wishful thinking or a desire for a past that was not all that grand for many of us; it is a desire for what was good about our people and our nation a wish for our better angels to rescue us.

Led by fools wrapped in false patriotism and draping themselves in more and more elaborate regalia of power, hanging their sense of victimization on the cross of rotting hypocrisy with the Prosperity Gospel as their guiding principal of pretentious faith, we lap up the Reality Soap Opera our government has become. We hang on the Tweets, flip channels seeking the most salacious version of the latest utterings and engage in on-going debates of what, why and who which grow increasingly heated even breaking families and decades old friendships against the debacle of the current political maelstrom. In the process we play into the hand of those who spent years and worked hard to dumb down a nation, distracting us from the real issues to focus on a clueless, classless buffoon with a big button, three baby mama’s and a lifetime in the tabloids. Trailing behind him tails dragging and equally indefensible are his mind-numbing minions digging in to do his will as we watch in dismay the nation brought low by their treacherous acts.

There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people’s safety and greatness.

Eldridge Cleaver

I am stunned. Where once stood heroes now the stage is filled with an assembly of

GOP with 45 celebrate Tax Bill

Fiends and Brutes, all jockeying for the front row wanting to take credit, be the first to claim the honor of destroying what is good and sane about us, replacing it with cruelty, banality and sometimes even evil. Where once stood heroes we are left with these slavish servants of duplicity and ignorance spewing their toxic venom on friend and foe alike.

Yet here we find ourselves today, in this once great nation led by cowards and calling those who are tasked with keeping us safe, who place themselves at risk to do so, those who swear oaths to uphold the laws of this land “Nazi’s”, “Jackbooted Gestapo”, “Stormtroopers”; was there anything else? I am certain I missed something, nevermind that should suffice. Looking out on the nation turned upside down and on its head, smiling as the real new generation Nazis march down our city streets waving swastikas and shouting slogans snatched directly from a history seeped in the blood of our grandparents and the horror of mass graves and genocide. These modern day radical nationalist can do nothing but nod their empty heads as they proclaim there are fine people in those mobs.

This President with every act makes us less than what we once were. I am stunned at the level of corruption we are sunk to. This nation cheers as this president tears up every treaty, destroys every alliance, gleefully pisses on every norms. What once saw a nation torn apart to its roots is now the forth column on the fifth page of the weekly paper as a cartoon.

What will ultimately demand our attention? Finally force us to take stock at what we have done to ourselves with this self-inflicted act of ignorance. What will finally break the cloak of silence around our better angels, cause them to unfurl their wings and unsheathe their swords to fight for what remains of the good in us and this nation.  Will we truly simply allow this side show to play out, praying the Democrats find their missing backbone and at a minimum perform their duties and stop this administration and their fellows in Congress from the worst of their actions? Or will we instead continue to submit to what is the very worst in what this nation and its people and have been.

I personally pray this is not the only solution we have. At this rate we are in for another six years of this Horror Show, by then it will truly be too late to save us.