Can we do anything lawful and legitimate to “protect, defend, and preserve” America as we know it?
I don’t know if anyone else saw the first part of this episode of Tucker Carlson last night; if you didn’t, this item will fill you in and provide a link to the replay. In particular, focus on the juxtaposition of the US Border crisis and Pelosi’s sermon on the need for American support of Ukraine’s border.
I consider myself sane and in control of my faculties; rational; modestly intelligent and introspective; and “present,” as they like to say in la-la world.
So as I watched the show last night, I could not explain or understand my reaction. Especially considering what has recently come to light via Peter Schweizer’s latest, “Red Handed.”
Shouldn’t I have gone into a flying rage, screaming at the top of my lungs, cursing a blue streak, throwing things, and punching nearby walls? Shouldn’t I be madder than I have ever been, in both senses of that word?
That’s what I thought I should be expecting of myself, but none of that occurred. Instead, I was in a state I can only describe as stunned, open-jawed disbelief. How can we blindly ignore the crisis on our own borders while Pelosi displays her moral superiority by proclaiming the urgent need to protect and preserve the sanctity of Ukraine’s borders? How can this be happening? This can’t be happening!
Any notion that we are a nation of laws is absurd; even more so that equality before the law is sacred. We are, it seems, living in governmental bizarro world, where power and corruption are the norms, and the national anthem is being replaced with “anything goes.”
Laws are ignored with no shame, and no attempt to hide the transgression. Some even announce their intentions and seek adulation for doing so! Maddeningly, they are being held on pedestals for doing so.
Oaths of Office are being flagrantly and routinely violated; the honor and integrity sacrificed in doing so means nothing; it is simply irrelevant. Our Constitution even contains language declaring members of Congress and their staffs (and apparently everyone else in government) cannot be held accountable for their lying. Don’t believe me? Look up the Speech and Debate Clause.
No one in the public eye, it seems, gives a damn about lying, cheating, stealing, and violating every last principle of their “Sacred Oath,” all while ignoring fundamental decency in their roles as “Public Servants.”
How can this be happening? It most assuredly is. What has happened to the common bond of devotion to ordered liberty and the pursuit of happiness in a lawful, self-governed regime?
Do we have no legitimate recourse in the face of such rampant, flagrant, disregard for everything that is/was “right?” Is there no legal process by which such disgraceful and criminal behavior can be challenged and the guilty forced to pay the price?
I suppose the reality is that those who we would normally petition to find recourse are themselves within the circle of corruption and criminality and dereliction of duty, and are figuratively and literally thumbing their noses at us, all while labeling us domestic terrorists and yelling out to the bartender “another round for my friends, Joe!”
As I write this, I am thinking further of just how deeply in trouble we are. When we have high officials willing to ignore every law, every oath, every principle of honor and integrity, what good would it do to have a high court find them guilty?
All such “constitutional” workings of our government are now revealed as simply “entertaining the voters,” or in other times “bread and circuses.”
I should stop here. This is not a time for advice on writing letters; finding good candidates and supporting them; running for office; knocking on doors to support candidates; or any of the other things which at their core assume that we have a legitimate system of governance with checks and balances and the power of the law over-arching it all. Lovely as it sounds, in the situation I describe, please don’t remind me that “this is why we have elections” either. It’s all too obvious how that form of recourse is rapidly becoming de-legitimized by a variety of means.
I’m at the point where all of the learned and inspiring writings of great minds, those who came before us and those now among us, can provide any solace, as long as they presume that we operate within a lawful, legitimate governmental system. I have read thousands of articles and hundreds of books that are postulated upon that foundation, and if that foundation is sand, instead of rock, they are all of only “academic interest” for those who want to read about what America once pretended to be. One is reminded of the Bible passage about building on rock versus sand.
We aren’t even pretending any more. There is no need to, because there is no shame, and no accountability for trashing the once-held principles that bound us together in liberty and prosperity, and no sense of honor and character to guide individual behavior. There is nothing worthy, at this point, of our respect, other than now irrelevant ink on paper. Oh, here and there, we still have office-holders that take their obligations seriously, but the “system” eventually forces them to join the ranks of the corrupt or be replaced. How many are willing to die upon this hill?
I will close with the question I asked at the beginning of this piece: is there no lawful, honorable, legitimate recourse that “we the people” have in such dire circumstances? Must we simply sit and watch the collapse occur right before our eyes in bright, high definition television with up-to-the-minute reporting and visual evidence?
Please, please tell me there is, and that I simply have not encountered it yet in my nearly 80 years.
