By Edwin Cooney
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth regarding the state of the American “body politic” is simple! We the people are willingly, with malice aforethought, choking the life out of the Republic we insist that we love every Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans’ Day and Thanksgiving Day and ask “Almighty God” to bless! There are several reasons for this.
(1) Driven by our fears and frustrations, our political ideologies — be they Conservatism, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Socialism or doctrinaire political religiosity — are more precious to us than patriotism.
(2) Self-righteousness vastly outranks political tolerance and inclusion in the decision-making processes of government today.
(3.) Out of our self-righteous frustration we’ve become ideological thrill-killers not merely bent on defeating political opponents, but on criminalizing and thus destroying them.
America, we’ve got to find an alternative way to exercise our natural right to legitimately oppose the establishment or even the very existence of legitimate lawful and national authority, or our capacity to establish integral and legitimate authority will melt into endless chaos and anarchy. Thus the dreams of Leon Czolgosz (the assassin of President William McKinley) and Giuseppe Zangara (the near assassin of President Franklin D. Rosevelt) could finally come true!
Every four years since 1968 America has been sliding into a new age of Medievalism which will benefit only the most well off among us. Therein lies the oligarchy that only a precious few Americans realize is stalking free and innocent Twenty-first Century America.
Most of us read in school about the darkness oh the Middle Ages in Europe. This era historians have labelled Medieval Europe. This was an era of limited government run by and therefore subject to the whims and the wars of the nobility. (Note: modern day conservatives too often focus on the absoluteness of government, that medieval government wasn’t “big government,” but what they leave out in the telling is that “big government” was not government of, by and for the poor, but government of, by and for the rich.) Medieval government came long before Marx and Leninism. After all, both Socialism and Communism were a reaction to the worst aspects of industrialism. Industrialism was the pathway that the creative and the ambitious took to amassing riches beginning in 1763 in Europe and during the 1830s in the United States.
In order to avoid a possible slide back into Medievalism, there are several tough realities with which we must face, even at our own discomfort.
We’ve got to stop being afraid of the future by longing and praying for a return to the past! Yesterday’s ways, as prosperous and glorious as they truly were, are today clearly poisoning the planet, stifling our educational structure, and limiting our ability to care for the poor and the sick. Next, we’ve got to get over the idea that some sectors of our society are over-regulated. Perhaps they’re ineffectively regulated, but show me something that is free of regulation and I’ll show you a potential crime in the making. American sports and entertainment, publishing, banking, and merchandising (specifically the patenting process) have to be regulated to avoid property thefts and market monopolies which inevitably stultify both competition and the price of goods and services. What needs to be re-regulated is broadcasting. The destruction of the fairness doctrine over the public airwaves has resulted in the dominance of those airwaves by the willful wealthy. Next, we’ve got to vanquish the idea that civil liberties and law enforcement are invariably antagonistic. The extension of civil liberties and our insistence on law enforcement are vitally important to the well-being of us all. Finally, we’ve got to get over the idea that gun control is an attempt by the government to strip us of our “liberty.” State militias as they existed at the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment to the Constitution are largely archaic. The truth is that you won’t keep Liberals out of your church, Conservatives out of your bedroom, and transvestites out of public bathrooms with your most “trusty guns!” (Sorry, Davy Crocket: Old Betsy ain’t nearly as powerful as one of President Trump’s drones!)
As I asserted at the outset, our most immediate national crisis is the criminalization or perceived criminalization of our political leadership. In the first place, not even President Trump has followed up on his campaign promise to lock up Hillary Clinton. “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons!” was one of his first post election comments. So, the question is, what did “lock her up!” mean? Then, there are those Democrats who, like their Republican predecessors, will go to all ends to avoid recognizing the authority of the President of the United States. By so doing, they wind up weakening the office they seek to utilize one day on behalf of their own constituents.
By attempting to look the other way, Richard Nixon let his most powerful supporters break into Democratic headquarters because supposedly George McGovern wasn’t as patriotic as he, Henry Kissinger and the other Republicans were. In 1974, for many Democrats it was payback time for the Watergate break-in. In the hearts of many liberals, President Nixon’s impeachment was justice for his lifelong shabby treatment of his political opponents. From that time to the present, there has been an ongoing crusade, not about the practical versus the impractical, the wise versus the foolish, but about the righteous innocent versus the willfully guilty.
Ironically, there is only one among us that can begin to repair the damage. Only one person can begin to turn us around and thus lead us into a new era of political, social and spiritual equity. Whether or not this individual even realizes he can do exactly that isn’t clear.
Nevertheless, whether you and I like it or not, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is that — at least until Wednesday, January 20th, 2021 — President Donald John Trump is the primary possessor of the capacity to save us from ourselves!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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